| It is time to stop pretending. The occupying forces in Iraq, including those from Britain, are illegal foreign invaders and must be withdrawn and the sooner the better... |
Bring the troops home — now!
WORKERS, NOV 2004 ISSUE
The Iraqi people are asserting their right to expel the invaders, liberate themselves and settle their own affairs without foreign interference. The Pentagon now estimates that the number of insurgents has quadrupled, to 20,000. The British former commander of coalition forces says 50,000. All the more surprising, and disgraceful, that 8,500 British troops are not only in Iraq but being put at even greater risk around Baghdad in order to boost Bush's election hopes and deepen Britain's entanglement.
The occupation is oppressive and insulting to a proud, educated people. 80% of Iraqis are unemployed now, and poverty has risen sharply. 27% of Iraqi under-5s are chronically malnourished. Unrepaired water supply and sanitation has led to 5,460 cases of typhoid in the first quarter of 2004. Tuberculosis, measles, mumps and jaundice are rife. Iraq's state of health is now as poor as that of the Sudan, Afghanistan and Yemen.
The US/British coalition has killed at least 13,000 civilians, possibly more than 15,000 - and injured 40,000. Not surprisingly, the Allawi administration now follows the US policy of censoring the figures on civilian casualties. US dead number 1,056 (77 in September alone), British 64, other occupying troops 67. So many lives destroyed for what Peter Hain called "a fringe issue". And deeper analysis shows that at 1:125 the death rate among British troops is already higher than among US troops (currently 1:130).
Human rights are being denied. A UNICEF report has revealed that British troops in Basra are arresting children "for alleged activities targeting the occupying forces" and handing them over to US forces for indefinite detention in prisons including the infamous Abu Ghraib. The International Committee of the Red Cross has registered 107 juveniles, some as young as ten, being held in six different coalition jails. Not surprising then that the US and the European Union, on 22 July 2004, blocked a UN resolution condemning the abuses in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay and calling for human rights and liberties to be protected.
An illegal war
As Kofi Annan, Secretary General of the United Nations, said on 16 September, the war on Iraq was illegal. The Nuremberg verdict was, "To initiate a war of aggression...is the supreme international crime." It follows that the consequent occupation is illegal too. This is not a "second war", as Blair claims, but the same illegal war.
Occupying powers are supposed to obey the Geneva Conventions (which the White House lawyer called 'quaint'), but the US/British forces in Iraq are instead copying Israel's illegal behaviour in Palestine. They are attacking and killing women, children and the elderly. In law a defendant is equally guilty of murder whether he desired the death of a person, or merely knew that his act was likely to cause death. Part IV of Protocol One to the Geneva Conventions forbids all attacks "which may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects." If it is reasonably foreseeable that an attack would cause damage, injury and death, then the perpetrator is liable in law. So the perennial US-British excuse, that their forces do not target civilians, fails.
Labour claims it is helping the USA to achieve democracy in Iraq. But it is overriding democracy in Iraq, and also overriding it at home. In a poll of 26 September, 52% of the British people called for troops to be withdrawn by the end of January; so do more than 85% of Iraqis. Parents of British troops have gone public attacking the whole Iraqi adventure. Now the US government wants to use British troops not to support Iraq's election, but to support Bush in the US election.
Banner on the London demonstration against the occupation, 18 October. Photo: Richard Searle / www.stopwar.org.uk
No sovereignty
No sovereignty was transferred to Iraq on 30 June, and no sovereignty will be transferred on 31 January either. The US state intends to stay in the country permanently - that is why it is building 12 military bases there, and why the only places they control are the oilfields. The US ruling class has hijacked the war on terrorism to cover its drive for supremacy. It aims to dominate the world through "preventive" wars, which are indistinguishable from aggressions.
However, the US state has feet of clay - it cannot use its military muscle to shape the world the way it wants. Unable to prevail over China and Korea, defeated by Vietnam, it is now trapped in the quagmire of Iraq. The US army is not geared to occupying a country, still less to nation building; it is designed for the old tactic of "butcher and bolt". Cheney said, "We will be greeted as liberators." But Iraq is not post-1945 France, or Germany or Japan. Rumsfeld forecast in February 2003, "It could last six days, six weeks, I doubt six months." Blair sneered, "They said we would be facing another Vietnam." Eighteen months ago, he promised troops would be in Iraq for a maximum of six months. Then he shamelessly told them they would be home by Christmas. (This Christmas he seems only to be promising the Black Watch a break.) The US government said that just 75,000 troops could occupy Iraq and only "several thousand after a year or two". There are 160,000 troops occupying Iraq now, and there is talk of sending more. The government encouraged British citizens to go to Iraq, and now fails to protect them. Foreign workers, including journalists, are leaving.
Bush has jumped from counter-attacking al Qa'eda to attacking terrorists more generally (those whom he chooses), then to attacking "those who harbour them", meaning a state like Afghanistan, and then to attacking states that didn't harbour them, like Iraq. His approach has diverted the USA from pursuing al-Qaeda - perhaps the Bush administration thinks it needs al-Qaeda. The notion of an undifferentiated threat, like that of a "clash of civilisations", can be cover for unending aggression, as in the 1960s when the US state portrayed Vietnam as an agent of China, which in turn it portrayed as an agent of the USSR. We must learn to ignore what aggressors say and watch what they do.
Blair's deception
The Iraq Survey Group report proves - once again - that there were no WMD in Iraq, and not even any active programmes for their production. So Iraq was not in breach of UN disarmament resolutions, and posed no threat to Britain or anyone else.
Yet early in 2002 Blair secretly changed government policy from containing Iraq to invading it, from peace to war, by promising to join Bush's illegal war of aggression, without telling the Cabinet or Parliament or the British people. As the British Ambassador to the USA said in March 2002, "We backed regime change." And Sir David Manning, Blair's foreign policy adviser, also in March 2002, told Condoleeza Rice, Bush's National Security Adviser, Blair "would not budge in (his) support for regime change".
Under the occupation, Iraq's nuclear facilities have been looted, but the US government (note, not the "sovereign" Iraqi government) refuses to allow the International Atomic Energy Agency back into the country, or to give it any information. The US government has just sold 500 bunker-busting bombs to Ariel Sharon: is this to wage further attacks on the Palestinian people? Or to attack Iran's nuclear facilities? Or both?
Every minute that British troops are in Iraq, the worse it gets. No parliamentary party will say what the British people want - Bring the Troops Home Now!
