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occupation falters
U.S. Installs Iraq Governing Council as Occupation Falters
The U.S. rulers arrogance has begun to waver, while they are still stonewalling about their pretexts for the war on Iraq. Washington’s viceroy in Iraq, Paul Bremmer III, has had to retreat from his plan to rule the occupied country directly and is increasingly trying to find local surrogates to hide behind.
Bremmer now says that the Iraqi Ruling Council, which met for the first time on July 13, will have decision-making powers. It was originally supposed to be “advisory” but now Bremmer says he cannot remember using that word. The U.S. bosses claim that the council was “self-selected.” In fact, politicians submitted their applications and the U.S. administration decided whether or not to accept them.
The composition of the Ruling Council, of course, has been carefully juggled to make it look representative of the Iraqi population. In fact, the old Supreme Soviet in the USSR had an ideal composition according to nationality, sex, etc. But it could have such an impressive composition because it had no real power whatsoever. It was a façade, as the Iraqi Ruling Council is.
The U.S. military has withdrawn from the town of Falluja, one of the centers of Iraqi resistance to the occupation, leaving control of the town in the hands of Iraqi police. In fact, the Iraqi police in the down had threatened to refuse to serve unless U.S. soldiers were withdrawn from the local police headquarters, on the grounds that the stationing of U.S. forces there made them a target for insurgent attacks. The police protest made the U.S. withdrawal all that more humiliating.
Although U.S. officials, like Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld and the military commanders under him, boast that the guerilla attacks are inflicting only “militarily insignificant” harm to the U.S. occupation forces, the political effects have been politically very damaging.
Moreover, on July 14, The New York Times reported that Rumsfeld had finally said that he might need to send more troops to reinforce the 146,000 already there. On July 10, the paper reported that Rumsfeld had increased his estimate of the costs of the occupation from $2 billion a month in April to $3.9 billion a month. At the same time, the costs of the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan have risen to nearly a $1 billion a month.
Maintaining the present level of U.S. forces in Iraq for up to five years, as the wartime commander, General Franks, now estimates, will tie down a very large percentage of the U.S. military machine. At the same time, the first furious protests by relatives of U.S. soldiers in Iraq have been reported. They will certainly grow.
A CNN/USA Today poll published on July 1 shows a precipitous decline in confidence in the U.S. war. The percentage of those who think the war against Iraq was not worth it had increased from 23% in April to 42% at the end of June – that is, it has nearly doubled.
The percentage of those who think the conflict is going badly for the U.S. has increased in the same period from 13% to 42%, and 53% of those polled said that they would be disturbed if the Bush administration’s claims of justification for the war turned out to be unfounded. Some 45% now say they doubt any evidence of ‘weapons of mass destruction’ will ever be found, up from 22% in April.
In fact, the failure of the Bush and Blair administrations to turn up any evidence for their claims that Saddam Hussein had ‘weapons of mass destruction’ and that he was working with al Qaeda has become a growing political scandal that is tending to dominate the political news.
The real implications of Washington’s touted “democratization” of Iraq are also becoming clearer. The U.S. rulers identify “democracy” with the rule of the “free market,” that is, the unrestrained feeding frenzy of capitalists, in which all feed off the working people and the big-fish capitalists, or the imperialists, feed off the little fish. While “democracy” was supposed to mean that Iraqis could control their own country, the U.S. viceroy has taken it upon himself to sell off their property to international capitalists and their local satellites.
New York Times correspondent Edward L. Andrews reported in the June 23 issue of the paper: “Paul Bremmer III . . . vowed today to dismantle the country’s state-run economy by selling off government-owned companies and writing new laws to encourage foreign investment.”
In its July 12 issue, the Lebanese daily L’Orient du Jour reported that the U.S. administration is planning to mortgage Iraq’s future oil revenues to pay off loans to international banks to pay the bills of “reconstructing” the country, the reconstructing to be done by big U.S. corporations.
The Lebanese paper noted: “The project is supported by the Export-Import Bank and several big American corporations . . . The Export-Import Bank and a coalition of big businesses like Halliburton and Bechtel, anxious to get contracts in Iraq, have warned that if no action were taken to guarantee new funds, the reconstruction would be in danger.”
But according to L’Orient du Jour, which based its article largely on information in The Los Angeles Times, even some figures in the U.S. administration and the various capitalist think tanks are worried that this measure will be too much of a scandal, because it will obviously tie the hands of any future Iraqi government, preventing it from making independent choices in economic policy.
Moreover, now that the U.S. forces have been taking steady loses and their operations are becoming more costly, the Bush administration has shown a new interest in internationalizing the occupation, that is, to get its capitalist brother states, who are brothers like Cain and Abel, to pick up part of the tab.
But so far the big fish has only been able to draw a raggedy collection of minnows behind, who are hungry for any scrap from the feeding of the larger predator.
Recently, India refused to send troops unless the occupation forces were put under United Nations command. But if the U.S. did this, it would have to make a major retreat from its pretension of being able to dominate the world on its own. And that would open the way for its competitors to grab some of the booty, which it has determined to deny them.
In addition, the U.S. is inevitably being pulled into wider conflicts within the region. In recent days, it had a bitter clash with Turkey, which has sent its Special Forces into northern Iraq to prevent any developments that it fears may encourage the forces fighting for more rights for the oppressed Kurdish population.
In its July 12 issue, the most serious of the Greek dailies, Elevtherotypia, reported: “Still more uneasiness is being aroused in Ankara by the strategic collaboration between the Americans and the Kurds, especially the PKK [formerly a radical Kurdish nationalist organization active in both Turkey and northern Iraq.].
The chairman of the Center for Eurasian Strategic Studies, Umit Ozipa, . . . said ‘Recently the PKK has carried out attacks against Iraq, which it never did and now it is getting support.’ Ozipa meant American support.”
The U.S. rulers have made it clear that their next target in the region in the Iranian regime. Thus, in their drive to establish their dominance in this area, they are beginning to come in conflict with the largest regional powers.
At the same time, the U.S. seizure of the world’s second largest oil producer (soon to be the first, if they can realize their plans) does not seem to be doing anything for the American economy. Unemployment is continuing to rise. Some 70% of the population now says that it is disappointed with the economic policy of the Bush administration.
The immediate likelihood is that this country’s economic problems will only lead the U.S. government to pursue still more adventuristic international policies. But the U.S. bosses are playing a more and more dangerous game, not just for the people they rule over, but for their entire system.
The article above is excerpted from a slightly larger version that appeared in the July 2003 issue of Socialist Action newspaper. The author is Gerry Foley.
