US in Iraq: this is not winning

``Success'' is the code word that washes over much mainstream reporting on the US taking of Iraq. Even on its own terms, the project is anything but.


Mopping up the damage from yet another resistance attack in Iraq

We hear it all the time in mainstream reports and from politicians. Going back to last fall, despite trying to paint the president as a poor manager of the war, the Democratic candidates actually sided with Bush because Kerry and Edwards were ``committed to success in Iraq''. This was routine campaign spiel, as Deep Blade reported after an Edwards appearance in Orono, Maine on September 8, 2004. Any suggestion that the US ought actually to stop what it's doing in Iraq and bring the troops home was treated as radioactive by all the Democrats.

Everything we are supposed to know about the US in Iraq is put in terms of this jingoistic success and self-satisfied optimism. Another example -- Last month, US Senator from Maine Susan Collins did so as she cleansed US war crimes in Fallujah. She wrote in a March 5, 2004 oped in the Bangor Daily News,

The most encouraging part of my visit to Iraq was our trip to Fallujah, a city once synonymous with danger and firmly in the insurgents' control. Once a sanctuary for insurgents, Fallujah is now what one Marine described as the ``safest city in Iraq" due to a fierce battle in which the Marines rooted out the insurgents and destroyed scores of weapons caches. This success has also encouraged more than a thousand Iraqis in the Fallujah area to have the confidence to come forward to fill police and army positions.

Can you imagine more blatant falsehoods and mischaracterization of the situation in Iraq? That is why we need the perspective of Steve Gilliard. In an essential post on Looking at Iraq from April 20, Gilliard reviews the US military's entire situation there. After all the air power, all the killing, all the home invasions, the imprisonment of tens of thousands of Iraqis, all the torture, and the flattening of Fallujah (supposedly to quell the hotbed of the resistance), here are a few of Gilliard's many pithy observations of the situation:

...

· The Iraqi resistance has also limited the use of the roadnet. Without convoys, resupply is impossible. This control is so dominant that US units now get some supplies by air.

· They have also thoroughly penetrated US assets in Iraq. No Iraqi unit can move without the guerrillas eventually finding out.

· US units are unable to leave their bases except on patrol. During the Vietnam War, Americans could frequent bars and live in the cities. No American can live in Iraq without security at the risk of kidnapping and death.

· The lack of infantry leaves the US unable to sustain military successes when they do occur. The scarcest military resource is not armor, but trained combat infantry. Sure, you can send artillerymen out on patrol and get tankers on foot. But infantry is irreplaceable for guerrilla warfare.

Every day, US forces go out, take casualties and go back to their bases, trying to survive yet another attack that night. The US, in two years, have lost lives and material, but gained little. There is not one area the US can say that guerrillas cannot operate. And that is the most important fact. After two years and 1500 dead, the guerrillas control the highway to the airport, Baghdad's main drags and the country's highways.

The essential US propaganda front we hear repeatedly -- including in Collins's piece -- about the optimistic future of Iraqi forces creating ``security'' for Iraq is laid bare as a big lie by Gilliard.

US troops do not belong in this situation. No kind of ``Iraqiization'' of the project is possible while the US is casting its shadow and applying its firm hand. I completely come down on the side of Naomi Klein in any discussion about whether the troops should be brought home sooner rather than later. She goes even farther than Gilliard by explaining how security for Iraqis has never been the main objective of US policy. On Democracy Now! for April 20, Klein argued:

The resistance largely controls Baghdad at this point, a situation where there are between 50 and 60 attacks a day. The militias that Erik [Gustafson] is warning about already control large sectors of Iraq, because providing security for the people of Iraq has never, from day one, been a priority of this occupation. We saw the abandonment immediately by allowing the looting to take place and only guarding the Ministry of Oil, and it's only gotten worse. You know, when I was in Iraq a year ago, this was the most persistent complaint -- was spiraling crime. And that's actually how the militias were created. They were created as a response to the fact that US Occupation never, ever prioritized giving security to Iraqis. The other issue is this idea that somehow US forces are helping to train Iraqi police, and that it's just a problem of training. What's actually happening is that there is -- is that the greatest liability for Iraqis to gain control over their own country security-wise, is the fact that the security forces have been embedded in the occupation itself and are seen as an extension of the hated and loathed occupation. So they get attacked as collaborators and slaughtered. They're not provided with any protection, and so on. So the best way for them to build up their own force and their own credibility, which is really what's needed, is a clear break with the occupation, which means immediately announcing a withdrawal of troops and setting up a transition plan. The first step has to be the announcement of troop withdrawal.

Yes, bring home our relatives, friends, and neighbors who are asked to fight this war on false optimism and pretenses of future ``success'' that are really nothing like the truth Klein has outlined.