As “coalition” repression increases in Iraq, many Voices have been raised in the media calling for more ‘boots on the ground’ in Iraq and urging Bush and Blair to ‘stay the course’ – encouragement which, given the vast political and economic stakes, they hardly need but which does play an important role in shoring up public support for the occupation. Below we look at some of these arguments.

1. ‘Failure to turn [Iraq] into a prosperous democratic state will be a grave setback for peace in the Middle East … Washington and its allies must grit their teeth in Iraq and see it through.’ (Telegraph leader writer Simon Scott Plummer, Telegraph, 6 April)

Setting aside the Orwellism (we must escalate our repression in the cause of ‘peace’) it should be a matter of basic principle that the US and British governments have no business determining the political and economic future of Iraq. They had no legal or moral right to invade the country and they shouldn’t be there now.

Furthermore, they are not trying to turn Iraq into a ‘prosperous democratic state.’ Indeed, the US wants ‘to control Iraq’s political transition while making it appear that it is driven by Iraqis’(FT’ Middle East editor, Roula Khalaf), ‘put[ting] democracy on hold until it can be safely managed’ (Salim Lone, director of communications for the UN in Iraq until Autumn 2003) whilst ‘pushing Iraq towards an even more radical form of [economic] shock therapy than was pursued in the former Soviet world’

(Nobel Prize winning economist, Joseph Stiglitz, Project Syndicate, 17 March).

Iraq expert and Professor of History at the University of Michigan, Juan Cole, notes that since it’s creation in 1921, ‘Iraq’s problems have for the most part derived from the extreme concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a succession of minority cliques—a state of affairs that the Americans may be in the process of fostering once again by their extreme economic liberalization policies’ (The Nation, 11 March 2004).

2. ‘[T]he terrorists have made Iraq the front line in their unholy war. In pursuit of their nihilistic agenda they are prepared to kill Westerners … The very few who advocate a cut-and-run policy clearly have not stopped to listen to the people who count most in this – the Iraqis themselves’

(Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, The Age, 13 April)

In reality, despite the fact that ‘US officials have for months publicly promoted the notion that foreign fighters and terrorists are playing a major role in the anti-American [sic] insurgency … foreigners play a tiny role’, according to ‘many military experts’ (AP, 3 May). In Baghdad, US Maj. Gen. Martin Dempsey told AP that ‘foreigners account for just 1 per cent or so of guerillas’ and that the idea that ‘foreign fighters [a]re flooding Iraq [is] “a misconception”’ (note the standard fashion in which US, British and other “coalition” forces are not counted as “foreign fighters”).

Nonetheless if there are “foreign fighters” in Iraq fighting the “coalition”, they are most likely there because of the occupation – witness the recent offer, apparently from Osama bin Laden, to ‘call a truce in al-Qaida activity “north of the Mediterranean sea” if states pulled their troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan within three months’

(Guardian, 16 Feb, emphasis added) – rather than simply a ‘nihilistic agenda … to kill westerners.’ Hence the presence of “foreign fighters” – if such there be – is actually another argument for withdrawal not continued occupation.

In any event organisations such as “al Qaeda and organizations like it, offshoots of it, second-generation al Qaeda have been greatly strengthened,” by the invasion and occupation of Iraq, according to Richard Clarke, the former top ‘anti-terrorism’ adviser to Bush (CBSNews.com, 21 March). According to Clarke, “Osama bin Laden had been saying for years, ‘America wants to invade an Arab country and occupy it, an oil-rich Arab country. He had been saying this. This is part of his propaganda. So what did we do after 9/11? We invade an oil-rich and occupy an oil-rich Arab country which was doing nothing to threaten us. In other words, we stepped right into bin Laden’s propaganda.” Yet another reason to withdraw.

Finally, it would actually be a good idea to ‘listen … to Iraqis’ – though no-one should be under any illusions that British foreign policy is, or should be, driven by Iraqi opinion polls.

Though quite a few polls have been conducted since the end of the invasion, no-one knows for sure what Iraqis think. To be sure, there is no evidence that – with the possible exception of Iraq’s Kurdish minority – a significant number, let alone a majority, of Iraqis would prefer a US/UK occupation force to a genuinely neutral peacekeeping force that was not trying to determine Iraq’s political and economic future – indeed, quite the reverse.

However many, if not all, of the polls appear to offer such an option, instead posing a stark choice between the “coalition” or nothing – forcing Iraqis to make a choice between continued occupation and possibly increased insecurity following a withdrawal. Nonetheless in one recent poll – conducted before the massive escalation in coalition repression in April – 57% of respondents called for ‘immediate’ withdrawal of “coalition” forces despite the fact 53% said that this would make them feel less secure (USA Today, 28 April).

3. Iraqis are relying upon “coalition” forces to provide security. If the “coalition” were to leave a civil war would ensue.

Unlike the other arguments this one is not pure propaganda – though as far as we are aware, no-one argued, following Saddam Hussein’s invasion, that Iraqi forces should have continued occupying Kuwait because Palestinians living there might get it in the neck if Iraqi forces withdrew (as indeed some of them did when Iraq was finally forced out).

There might well be serious security problems – even civil war – if “coalition” troops simply withdrew tomorrow and nothing took their place. Nonetheless this is an argument for a genuinely neutral international peacekeeping presence – with no participation from the countries that have participated in the invasion and occupation – to replace the “coalition” not for the maintenance of the current occupation.

Of course, nothing remotely like this is currently on the cards and we must continue to resist the attempts to use the UN as a fig leaf for the ongoing US/UK military occupation (see above).

As for ‘security’, the argument ignores the fact – demonstrated in Fallujah and else-where – that the coalition forces are themselves one of the main dangers to Iraqi civilians.

Finally, whether consciously or not, the occupying forces may also be sowing the seeds of civil war their presence is ostensibly preventing.

Indeed, the results of using Kurdish forces to fight the insurgency were in evidence in Fallujah.

” When the fighting is over … I will sell everything I have, even my home,” a resistance fighter told the Washington Post, ‘we[eping] as he recalled his 8-year-old daughter, who he said was killed by a U.S. sniper in Fallujah a week ago. “I will send my brothers north to kill the Kurds, and I will go to America and target the civilians. Only the civilians. Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth. And the one who started it will be the one to be blamed”’ (18 April).

The US/UK military occupation of Iraq is wrong. It is bad for Iraqis and bad for US and British citizens – if not for the corporate fat cats who are making a profit out of the enterprise (see http://www.voices.netuxo.co.uk/library/letter_may2004.html#Amec for the British angle). It must end.

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