Iraq: US occupation digs in
US strategy is being dressed up as leaving Iraq to its people, amidst fanfare and propaganda as devious as the pack of lies that preceded the 2003 invasion.
By Sami Ramadani
Stop the War Coalition
09 September 2010
Sami Ramadani, a member of Stop The War Steering Committee and Iraqi Democrats Against Occupation, explains how US strategy is being dressed up as leaving Iraq to its people, amidst fanfare and propaganda as devious as the pack of lies that preceded the 2003 invasion.
President Obama addressed Iraq war veterans on 28 August 2010 and made a rather startling statement.
'Like any sovereign, independent nation, Iraq is free to chart its own course,' he solemnly declared.
It appears that Obama has forgotten that Bush and Blair had declared Iraq free and sovereign on numerous occasions, each time using a different cover to camouflage the same lie.
The first time was after they brutally invaded and occupied it in 2003. They declared it free and sovereign again in 2004, after Paul Bremer handed power over to the Iraq Governing Council, the members of which he himself appointed.
Then came a succession of Bush-Blair solemn announcements of Iraq becoming free and sovereign, to coincide with the various sham elections.
So what prompted Obama to make his declaration? The occasion was the continued deployment of 50,000 US occupation forces on Iraqi soil, ie one third of the forces that occupied it in 2003. Obama is proving to be as shameless as his predecessors. To add insult to the running wounds of millions of Iraqis, he called on Americans to honour those who served in Iraq.
More than one million US forces served in Iraq, causing the death of more than a million of its people. He did not say a word about the catastrophe that is Iraq today.
It would have been inconvenient for him to refer to the legacy of the US-led war of aggression:
- millions of orphans and widows;
- millions of internal and external refugees;
- alarming rise in city slum dwellers from 20% to 53% of Iraq's 19 million urban population;
- laying the foundation for one of the world's most corrupt and unstable states;
- massive damage to all essential services and people's daily lives;
- rapid rise in cancer cases and deformities of the newly born, caused by the use of depleted uranium and chemical weapons;
- over 50% unemployment;
- disproportionate damage to the lives of women and children;
- US tactics of divide and rule, utilising ethnic and religious differences;
- opening Iraq's borders to an assortment of terrorists to fuel ethnic and religious tensions;
- using terror laws to repress Iraqi trade unionists.
Obama also kept the American people in the dark about a crucial aspect of US policy: to change the appearance of US domination of Iraq and its future use as a base to intervene in Iran and Syria and launch new wars of aggression.
US strategy is being dressed up as leaving Iraq to its people, amidst fanfare and propaganda as devious as the pack of lies that preceded the 2003 invasion.
The truth is that the US is not leaving Iraq but entrenching its presence through a number measures designed to deceive the public and reduce the number of US casualties. The measures include:
- increasing the number of mercenaries contracted to the State Department, the Pentagon and the Iraqi government;
- strengthening the role of US special forces units, trained on assassination and special operations;
- expanding the role of the US air force and the use of drones to attack resistance forces;
- continuing the expansion of at least four major military bases;
- deploying some of the withdrawn troops along the Iraq-Kuwait borders;
- ordering the Iraqi regime to request the continuation of the presence of the US forces beyond the end of 2011 deadline – probably activating the colonial-style Strategic Framework Agreement imposed on Iraq in 2009;
- using Iraqis to front operations commanded and backed by US forces.
One thing that Obama and successive US administrations have consistently underestimated is the deep-rooted yearning of the Iraqi people for genuine freedom and democracy, and their inspirational history of opposing and resisting all forms of oppression.
This article first appeared in Stop The War Newsletter STW7, out now and available from STW office. Bulk orders available for stall, meetings etc. Contact the Stop the War office for details: Tel: 020 7801 2768
