Bush’s Iraq war has indeed been in the making for quite some time. For the last several years, the idea of invasion of Iraq was being constantly discussed and debated in American ruling circles. In 1998, the American Congress had even passed an Iraq Liberation Act. There is a clear line of continuity between Clinton’s statement while signing the ILA and Bush’s final proclamation of war. Here is what Clinton said on October 31, 1998: “The United States wants Iraq to rejoin the family of nations as a freedom-loving and law-abiding member. This is in our interest and that of our allies within the region. … The United States looks forward to a democratically supported regime that would permit us to enter into a dialogue leading to the reintegration of Iraq into normal international life.”(emphasis added). Of course, he did not forget to add, with characteristic superpower arrogance, that “Iraqis deserve and desire freedom like everyone else.”
Compare this to Bush’s proclamation of March 16, 2003: “The dictator of Iraq and his weapons of mass destruction are a threat to the security of free nations. He is a danger to his neighbours. He is a sponsor of terrorism. He is an obstacle to progress in the Middle East.” While indicting the Bush administration for the invasion and occupation of Iraq, we must not lose sight of this strong streak of continuity in American foreign policy between Clinton’s Democratic government and Bush’s Republican regime. Clinton’s statement had made it amply clear that the US looked to the Security Council’s efforts only as an interim arrangement “to keep the current regime’s behaviour in check” till the regime was finally changed. The clamour for a change of regime of Iraq to ensure Iraq’s reintegration into normal international life (read ‘reintegration into the American scheme of things’ or in one word ‘recolonisation’) has thus been the common refrain of the US foreign policy.
To secure a change of regime, the Iraq Liberation Act authorised the US government to lend all possible support to ‘a democratic opposition’ in Iraq. In the same statement Clinton also mentioned that ten days ago he had signed into law the Omnibus Consolidated and Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Act, 1999, which made $8 million available for assistance to the Iraqi democratic opposition. Yet after more than four years, this democratic opposition was still nowhere near achieving the cherished US objective of regime change and the US therefore pushed the war button to do the needful!
War as an option to engineer a regime change and ensure Iraq’s reintegration into normal international life was always written into the US foreign policy and the government of the day only had to choose the appropriate moment for pressing the war machine into action. This is why one found a near-total consensus among the Democrats and Republicans on the question of going to war. If any debate ever surfaced within America’s mainstream politics it was not around Bush’s decision to launch the war but around Rumsfeld’s strategy of winning a swift victory when the US troops seemed to face some initial hiccups midway through the war campaign. In Britain too, the two major parties of British capital, the Tories and Labour, displayed a remarkable convergence despite the fact that many Labour MPs did question and oppose the war.
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Box 1
Iraq : A History of Imperialist Occupation and People’s Resistance
For the people of Iraq, imperialist invasion, occupation, brutal aggression and repressive rulers are nothing new. But the last century has also witnessed vibrant nationalist resistance by the people of Iraq.
In the early twentieth century, imperialist powers (Britain, France, Germany, Russia) were engaged in contests to carve up the Middle East among themselves. With the growing realization of the strategic importance of oil, European and American oil companies hand in glove with their home governments and armies, began to enter the region.
Colonialists Carve Up the Middle East
During World War I, Britain landed a force (in which thousands of Indian soldiers were used as cannon fodder) in Iraq, and captured Baghdad in 1917 and Mosul in 1918. On the one hand, British imperialists tried to exploit Arab nationalist opposition to the Ottoman Empire, by promising Arab independence after the War. At the same time, the British and the French came to secret agreements to carve up Iraq among themselves, compensating Tsarist Russia with territory in Turkey. Arab people came to know of the British treachery only after the Russian Revolution of 1917, when the Bolshevik government led by Lenin revealed the secret treaties.
After the War, France was given the ‘mandate’ to rule Syria and Lebanon, while Britain got the ‘mandate’ for Palestine and Iraq. But in 1920 itself, Iraqi people rose in protest against the ‘mandate’, which meant the British colonial takeover of their country. Iraqi villages got their first taste of imperialist aerial bombing and chemical weapons in 1920. In that year, Winston Churchill, then Secretary of State for War and Air, proposed that Iraq “could be cheaply policed by aircraft armed with gas bombs, supported by as few as 4,000 British and 10,000 Indian troops.” This policy was formally adopted by the 1921 Cairo Conference. (The Hidden History of the Iraq War, Edward Greer, Monthly Review, May 1991)
Recall that not long before such massacres of freedom-loving Iraqis, the British had cold-bloodedly massacred unarmed Indians to suppress peaceful protest, in Jallianwala Bagh in 1919.
Puppet Regimes Sell out Iraq’s Precious Oil
Faced with nationalist protest, the British decided not to exercise their ‘mandate’ in the form of direct colonial rule. Instead, they installed a puppet king, Faisal I, who immediately signed a ‘Treaty of Alliance’ which was more or less a carbon copy of the ‘mandate’! This was followed by powerful nationalist protest, as a result of which the cabinet was forced to resign. The British High Commissioner assumed dictatorial powers, and there was widespread deportation of nationalist leaders.
In 1925, despite massive protests in Baghdad demanding complete independence, the British High Commissioner bullied and arm-twisted the Constituent Assembly into ratifying the Treaty. From a colony, Iraq became a semi-colony. Even before any semblance of Iraqi government could be set up, the Turkish Petroleum Company (TPC, which was 50% British, 25% German and 25% Dutch-British) were given a new concession lasting till the year 2000! The puppet king received a bribe, in return for which Iraqi oil would have to be sold to TPC at an absurdly throwaway price.
By 1928, two US companies (later known as Exxon and Mobil), backed by the US government, got a 23.75% stake in the TPC, now renamed as the Iraq Petroleum Company (IPC).
Formal Independence, Continuing Semi-colonialsm
The Iraqi nationalist movement forced Britain to grant Iraq formal independence in 1932. But Britain retained its military bases in Iraq, its puppet King Faisal, and a new treaty which allowed for the continuation of indirect rule. In 1941, sections of the Iraqi army and political parties staged a coup against the King, and planned to ally with the Axis powers to win freedom for Iraq. But Britain responded by invading Iraq again, occupying it, and installing the King and a puppet cabinet headed by Prime Minister Nuri as-Said. British occupation continued after the end of World War II.
Heightened Anti-imperialist Nationalism, Emergence of US Imperialist Power in the Region
However, in the years that followed, the entire region was in nationalist ferment. A popular upsurge in Iran led to the election of prime minister Mohammed Mossadeq in 1951. The nationalization of oil in Mossadeq’s Iran, the emergence of Gamal Abdel Nasser’s Egypt as a popular voice against imperialist domination in the region, and Nasser’s nationalization of Suez Canal in 1956 fuelled similar nationalist demands in Iraq. Several popular uprisings took place against the sell-out of national sovereignty, and demanding the nationalization of the oil industry.
Meanwhile, Iran was punished for its nationalization of oil by a crippling boycott by oil corporations, followed by a CIA-sponsored coup, which overthrew the democratically elected leader Mossadeq in1953.
The US now assumed the role of policing the region, providing US troops and aid to puppet regimes and dictators in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon, to help them in staging coups, crushing democracy, repressing oil workers’ strikes and smashing the widespread anti-imperialist resistance.
Iraq in the Aftermath of US-led Occupation
Speculations are rife as to whatever has happened to Saddam Hussein, his close associates and his Republican Guards, and why Baghdad fell virtually without a fight, when places like Basra, Naseeriya and Najaf had resisted the occupation forces for weeks together. Whatever may have happened to them, it is true that the romantic notion of Baghdad turning into another Stalingrad has certainly not been fulfilled. As an Iraqi activist has rightly pointed out, it would have been most foolish on the part of the Iraqi forces to try and copy Stalingrad. Iraq’s condition in this most unequal war was far worse than that of the Soviet Union in the Second World War, at least the Russians did not lack ‘bread, bombs and bandages’ as the Iraqis did. But then if Baghdad 2003 has not been a repeat of Stalingrad 1943, it has also not been a repeat of Berlin 1989. The accumulated anger of the Iraqi people has already started exploding against the occupation forces and we can already see the beginning of a new phase of people’s resistance.
Iraqi activists see a stronger parallel between today’s Iraq and Afghanistan under Soviet occupation. Just as Soviet invasion and occupation of Afghanistan could not be stopped then by the Americans and their allies, no country or alliance has succeeded in stopping the Anglo-American invasion and occupation of Iraq. But then the Afghan misadventure proved to be the terminal folly of the Soviet Union. Can the US imperialists escape the long-term consequences of their Iraq expedition?
Concerns are being expressed in certain circles regarding the future of Iraq’s modern and secular social ethos. Worries are heard about the possibility of a Taliban or Saudi-type fundamentalist future for Iraqi women. And we are sure the pro-US intellectuals and media managers who are today celebrating the sights of “Shia freedom” in “liberated Iraq” will soon start railing against Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism.
There is no doubt about a renewed appeal of Islam among the people of Iraq, the country that has been home to many chapters and legends of Islamic religious history. As Marxists, we should not have any problem in understanding it. This is a country that has been at war almost uninterruptedly for more than two decades. This is a country that has seen millions of people get killed and maimed through systematic strafing and sanctions. Under such circumstances it is not difficult to understand why large sections of the Iraqi people are turning to Islamic history and tradition to assert their innate sense of freedom and dignity in the face of severe imperialist aggression and Anglo-American occupation. As Marx had said, “Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the sentiment of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions.”
The admitted resurrection of Islam in Iraq need not necessarily push Iraq along fundamentalist lines. Islam in US-occupied and oppressed Iraq may very well serve as a bedrock of national unity and anti-imperialist popular resistance.
Box 2
“Embedded Media” : Weapons of Mass Deception
The American and British media channels like CNN and BBC played a crucial role in the assault on Iraq. They did their best to present “Target Iraq” as the latest exciting Hollywood action movie, a grand fireworks show of “smart”, “precision” bombing. For the first time, these channels and several newspapers dropped even the pretence of “unbiased” coverage. Instead, 529 reporters chosen to be “embedded” in the US army, agreeing to have the Pentagon censor their reports. Or rather, they equated “unbiased, accurate” journalism with the US official point of view. For example, CNN, BBC etc., while introducing ‘embedded’ reporters, felt no need to warn viewers that the reports they would hear were censored and sanitized by the Pentagon. But when introducing an independent reporter, like Rageh Omar (whose sensitive reporting was a breath of fresh air on the BBC), BBC would warn viewers that his reports were being monitored by Iraqi officials.
On some occasions, such channels were unintentionally exposed by their own words. For instance, an e-mail by Roger Mosey, head of BBC TV News, got leaked, in which he expressed great satisfaction at BBC’s ‘extraordinary’ war coverage. This e-mail was not meant for the public, so Mosey could openly express his admiration for the fact that the war news “almost feels like world cup football”, where you can ‘switch between’ one “theatre of war” to another! Similarly, in the first week of bombing, one reporter for an American channel asked excitedly, “How much more of the show is still left?”(Outlook,April 7,2003). These inadvertent slip-ups revealed the real intention of these channels: to present a gory massacre as a “show” or a mega sports event.
Their job was to show mushroom clouds, raging fires, tanks racing across the desert and thundering explosions. In order to project war as entertainment, they did not show charred bodies, children with heads blown off, kids with bodies riddled with shrapnel.It was left to independent journalists and Arab TV channels to show the real face of the “war”. If it were not for their efforts, the faces of wounded, maimed Iraqi children, devastated Iraqi homes, fleeing Iraqi families, and, most of all, heroic Iraqi resistance, would never have been seen by the world. It was these channels which showed the world footage of the old Iraqi women who fired at American soldiers, and the Iraqi peasants who shot down a US military helicopter.
The US military did its best to bomb such honest voices into silence. The Iraqi TV station was bombed, Arab TV channel Al-Jazeera’s office in Basra was shelled, its offices in Baghdad were bombed by US warplanes. Also, the Palestine Hotel, where several independent journalists of various countries were staying, was deliberately fired on by the US army. These attacks killed or injured several reporters. The message of the US army was clear. In the style of mafia goons, they were telling journalists – either buy protection by ‘embedding’ yourself with us, or we will kill you.
Someone has rightly coined the term ‘presstitution’ to describe the hypocrisy and perversion of the imperialist media.
