The war in Iraq continues with attacks on recruits in the puppet military forces that were set up and trained by the U.S. imperialist occupiers. Despite there claims of withdrawal, the Pentagon will maintain at least 50,000 troops in the country.
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Illegal occupation continues despite phony troop withdrawal
By Gene Clancy
Published Aug 29, 2010 10:52 PM
“We won! It’s over — America!” A young man whoops and hollers in what could be a cry from the crowd at a sports game. In fact, it was the ill-judged, hubristic “victory’” shout of a soldier rolling over the Kuwaiti border in his armored truck, as supposedly the last U.S. combat brigade left Iraq after seven grueling years.
The media and commentators alike have hailed the so-called U.S. withdrawal as the end of the U.S. war against Iraq. It is, however, no withdrawal — combat or otherwise — no matter how many times it is called that.
Some 50,000 U.S. troops will stay in Iraq, down from 96,000, ostensibly to play a supporting role and advise Iraqi forces. That is, however, 50,000 armed U.S. troops, backed up by major military hardware and artillery. They will operate in “self-defense” and could intervene in armed combat at the request of the puppet Iraqi government.
According to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the State Department will take on vastly increased responsibilities: The department is planning to more than double its private security guards, up to as many as 7,000, according to administration officials who disclosed new details of the plan. Defending five fortified compounds across Iraq, the security contractors will operate radar to warn of enemy rocket attacks, search for roadside bombs, fly reconnaissance drones and even staff quick reaction forces to aid civilians in distress, the officials said.
The size of the U.S. Embassy in Iraq will be increased to around 2,500 officials. Two new satellite offices, in Basra and Mosul, costing $100 million each are to be established. (New York Times, Aug. 18)
All this is in addition to 170,000 private contractors being paid by the U.S. government, many of them military mercenaries, already operating in Iraq.
By 2011 all U.S. troops are to be withdrawn, according to a treaty with the puppet Iraqi government. This has led some veteran imperialist analysts to suggest that thousands of redeployed troops will be needed after 2011.
“We need strategic patience here,” Ryan C. Crocker, who served as ambassador in Iraq from 2007 until early 2009, said in a New York Times interview. “Our timetables are getting out ahead of Iraqi reality. We do have an Iraqi partner in this. ... But if they come to us later on this year requesting that we jointly relook at the post-2011 period, it is going to be in our strategic interest to be responsive.”
The accomplishments of ‘nation building’
The Barack Obama administration has so far been somewhat restrained in its comments about the so-called withdrawal, even though it was a major campaign promise during the last presidential election. As of Aug. 23, Obama has released only one written statement and made a one-sentence reference at a pair of fundraisers.
While some called it the end of the seven-year war, Obama sought to avoid the sort of “mission accomplished” moment that came to haunt George Bush after he prematurely declared a victory in Iraq on May 1, 2003, soon after the U.S. invasion. (New York Times, Aug. 22)
The administration’s dilemma raises the question of just what has been accomplished so far by a war which began as a “preemptive” strike against nonexistent weapons of mass destruction and morphed into an exercise in “nation building,” i.e., the creation of an imperialist-run neocolony.
Consider the children, who represent the future of the “new order” in Iraq. In December 2007, the Iraqi government reported that there were 5 million orphans in Iraq — almost half of the country’s children. Seventy percent of children are suffering from trauma-related symptoms, according to a study of 10,000 primary school students in the Shaab section of north Baghdad, conducted by the Iraqi Society of Psychiatrists and the World Health Organization.
“We’re now finding an elevation of mental health disorders in children — emotional, conduct, peer, attention deficit,” according to Iraqi psychiatrist Said al-Hashimi. “A number are even resulting in suicide.” (San Francisco Chronicle, March 19, 2007)
The independent monitoring group Iraq Body Count says as many as 106,000 civilians were killed. Another group, the ORB (Opinion Research Business), an independent British polling agency, suggests that the total Iraqi violent death toll due to the Iraq War since the U.S.-led invasion is in excess of 1.2 million. These statistics do not include the estimated 23,000 Iraqi freedom fighters who died defending their country from invasion and occupation.
Also not counted are the tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians abused by military sweeps of their neighborhoods, or those tortured, killed and raped in prisons such as Abu Ghraib by the CIA and private contractors. The Pentagon recently imprisoned a U.S. Army intelligence officer, Spc. Bradley Manning, and charged him with releasing graphic video evidence of a massacre of civilians from an attack helicopter in Iraq.
Despite billions of dollars poured into Iraq for “reconstruction,” not one measure of economic, education, public health or safety has reached the levels that existed before the U.S. invasion. This includes the electrical grid and oil production, which was the primary (although unspoken) reason for the invasion.
For these horrendous results, the Pentagon has sacrificed 4,463 American dead and over 33,000 wounded, many maimed for life. The day after “the withdrawal” a soldier was killed by a rocket attack in southern Iraq. Last year, the U.S. military reported the most suicides since they have been keeping records.
The progressive movement around the world must demand an immediate withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Iraq, Afghanistan and around the world. Bring the troops home now!
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