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The only way is out
The American ship of state will be broken on the rock of the nation
of Iraq, leaving unconditional withdrawal as Washington's only
option
By Abdul-Ilah Al-Bayaty
12/11/05 "Al-Ahram"
-- --
The defeat of the United States' aggression on Iraq was expected
even before the beginning of the invasion. There were many
indicators to show that the right of Iraqis to independence and
democracy would be stronger than all the military might of the US.
As is well known in war theories, aggressive power cannot achieve
victory except under two scenarios: by its ability to destroy
completely, or by destroying the will to continue resisting. In the
case of the war on Iraq, it is evident that the enemy of the United
States is the majority of the Iraqi people which it attacked to
destroy its Arab-Muslim appurtenance and identity, plunder its
natural resources and subjugate it to a puppet government it
creates. This is impossible for geopolitical, moral and practical
reasons. The consequence of this impossibility is that the more the
United States tries to destroy its enemies in Iraq, the more it
finds that the resistance of the Iraqi people grows.
The Iraqi people by its culture, civilisation and heritage
supported, and supports always, the oppressed against the oppressor.
If it seemed to some that the Iraqi people are against Saddam
Hussein, they forgot that the same people were never against the
Iraqi state that the United States invaded to crush, abolish and
remake according to its interests and will. Only some Kurdish
leaders who seek separation, and some Shia politico- religious men
who want to install Wilayat Al-Fakih (the rule of the supreme
guardian) under Al-Hakim family, can accept to destroy the secular
Iraqi state. Iraqis are proud of being Iraqis. They consider
themselves all sons of Iraq and are proud of having a united Iraq
that possesses oil, culture and science, water and a strategic
position.
The ignorance of the American strategists and their allies -- Ahmed
Chalabi, Rend Rahim, Kinaan Makiyah, Falih Abdul-Jabar, and the like
-- who theorised the US invasion of Iraq is such that they took
their interests as reality, forgetting Iraqis' pride in their free
will and independence, and in their Arab-Muslim identity which
passes to them from father to son. They believed, or wanted to
believe, that with some money and much terror, Iraqis would bow
before their imperial project as they bowed -- at least they think
-- before Saddam Hussein. They forgot, or wanted to forget, that
Saddam Hussein, in spite of his dictatorship, has the support of the
secular, educated middle class for the nationalisation of the oil
industry, the development of Iraq's modern infrastructure, the
universalisation of electricity, education and health services, and
for putting Iraq on the plain of Cuba, Venezuela and North Korea in
refusing imperialist diktat. They forgot also, Kurds and pro-Iranian
religious leaders excepted, that Iraqis may differ but they continue
to feel that they are the same people, that they are brothers, and
that they don't want Iran, Arab, Western or Eastern interference in
their affairs.
In addition, the invasion of Iraq by the United States and its
allies took place when imperialist powers wherever are no more able
to invade other countries as they used to do in the 19th century.
The reasons are multiple.
Firstly, the wars in Vietnam, Cuba, South Lebanon and Palestine
proved that military superiority and military victory don't mean the
ability to occupy the invaded country if its people resist; and the
Iraqi people proved it would resist from the very first battles in
Um Qasr and Nassiryah. Secondly, it is the youth of the world and
its progressive movements that builds world public opinion, not the
mainstream media controlled by the US. This was proven in Seattle,
Durban and in the world's demonstrations against the war on Iraq. We
see the result of this fact in the demonstrations against the war in
the US itself.
Thirdly, war and invasion cost money and the American people have no
interest in paying money to invade other countries, by way of which
only the military industries and oil multinationals make profits,
especially when the Iraqi military, as every patriot would do,
prevented the occupation from using Iraqi petrol to finance the
occupation's military operations.
Fourthly, civilisation and international law don't permit any more
adventurers like President Bush and the neo-buccaneers around him to
insult the world's human consciousness by invading poor peoples in
name of lies.
Fifthly, Iraqi people, like all living peoples, do not accept
occupation and slavery.
Now we arrived to a situation where the US, by invading Iraq, is in
a political and moral ruin from which it will not recover -- if it
tries to recover -- for years. On the other hand, Iraq has suffered
political, moral and economic crimes committed by the US. What is
the way out?
I think it is of no use all this changing of tactics, like the Cairo
Conference or the phony next elections, whose end is that the US
decides the destiny of Iraq and escapes liability in waging an
illegal war on Iraq. As long as Iraq is not left to its people,
America's military, economic, political and moral losses will
continue to increase. There is no path before the US but to pull out
rapidly and unconditionally, taking with it this monster which it
created and called the government and security forces, recognising
that all oil in Iraq is the property of the whole Iraqi people, and
letting the legal administration pre-invasion -- especially the
national army and its resistance groups -- take power and administer
the country until free and fair democratic elections can take place.
The people of Iraq will never, however long is the time afforded,
recognise the puppet government, its contracts and agreements and
laws, as legal or legitimate. In addition, if the US wants to have
amicable relations with the people of Iraq, it should pay
compensation for all the damage and suffering it caused Iraq.
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