Iraqi
Invasion and Occupation Obscures Crisis of Imperialism
The vicious U.S. military machine
sits astride the dignity and freedom of the Iraqi people, after successfully
overwhelming an obscenely outmatched Iraqi military.
Moving from a population base
ten times larger than that of Iraq and an economy more than a hundred
times greater, leaders and media of the U.S. are boastfully self-congratulatory
over the ease with which the U.S. appears to have achieved its immediate
aim of overthrowing the government of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein as
its first step in attempting to reshape the power relations of the Middle
East and the world.
The initial arrogant miscalculation
of the U.S. military — it's rush headlong toward Baghdad that left
an exposed supply line stretched out for hundreds of miles and resulted
in the first U.S. captives and casualties — led many to hope the
Iraqis would succeed in inflicting enough damage to tie U.S. forces down
in Iraq long enough for the worldwide anti-imperialist revolutionary forces
to join the fray from various fronts in earnest.
Iraqi mass resistance was
faced with limitations
However, the fact that Iraq had been starved under U.S.-driven United
Nations’ sanctions and regularly bombed by U.S. and British imperialists
for the last 12 years guaranteed that the weakened, badly-equipped Iraqi
military would prove highly inadequate.
Moreover, the nature of the
Arab nationalist Iraqi government itself placed severe limitations on
its ability to initiate a more effective resistance to U.S. colonial aggression.
The ruling Baath Party had viciously suppressed all opposition in the
country, including socialists and other revolutionaries who might have
contributed to the mobilization of the Iraqi people against the invasion.
Although Iraqi nationalism
among the masses prevented the people from simply capitulating to U.S.
terror as U.S. war planners had predicted, nationalism was not enough
to win the people to mass organized resistance in defense of the government.
In addition, the repressive
policy of the Iraqi government toward the oppressed Kurdish people in
northern Iraq deprived the people of the unity necessary for an effective
defense of the country and government. The Kurdish issue has functioned
like a time bomb for the region, threatening the stability not only of
Iraq, but also of Turkey and Iran, and to a lesser degree Syria.
The Kurds are a distinct people
with a distinct culture, language and history who have been denied the
right to a national homeland subsequent to what has been declared "de-colonization"
of the region. The aspiration of the Kurdish people for a national homeland
has been seen as a threat of varying significance to the different governments
in territories where the Kurds are located.
In other words, the united
population necessary for the conduct of People's War as successfully employed
by the Vietnamese against French and U.S. imperial white power and by
China against Japan, did not exist in Iraq.
Viet Nam, China and Algeria
are examples of how poor countries with limited resources can prevail
in contests with rich and powerful countries.
The 1980 U.S.-instigated and
supported attack on Iran, and the suppression of socialists and revolutionary
internationalists in Iraq itself, also limited the ability to mobilize
an organized resistance from throughout the region from the masses of
workers and peasants whose hatred of U.S. imperialism was made obvious
in the mass demonstrations held throughout the region, mostly in defiance
of the regional Arab governments who worked to support the Imperialist
invasion of Iraq behind the backs of their people.
U.S. attack on Iraq designed
to win white support for imperialist aggression
Recognizing this is important because the invasion of Iraq was deliberately
designed to attack a country where imperialist logic determined it could
be achieved with relative ease.
For the U.S., the lesson of Viet Nam has up to now limited its ability
to win the mass of North Americans or white people to support imperialist
ventures. This is because the Vietnamese inflicted a defeat on U.S. forces
that has made the North American people gun-shy, afraid to attack anybody
lest they invite the humiliating defeat imposed upon them by the Vietnamese.
September 11 provided the U.S.
government with the momentum for attacking Iraq, although there was no
connection between Iraq and September 11. But the white people of the
U.S. were forced to tussle with the idea that there is no longer any way
to hide from the possibility of defeat, whether on the battlefield miles
away or within the malls and suburbs of the U.S.
Behind the backdrop of September 11, the U.S. regime of George Bush picked
Iraq as the target for an easy victory that could make the white people
less reluctant to support imperialist military ventures that could rescue
the system from its crisis. This crisis has been caused by the unrelenting
struggles for self determination by various peoples of the world, upon
whose domination the white power world capitalist system depends for its
continued survival.
Resistance against U.S.
occupation continues in Iraq
But, despite the earlier, U.S.-staged demonstrations of Iraqis welcoming
the conquering Americans, it is not over in Iraq. Indeed, it may very
well be that the real struggle is now going to begin.
Already thousands of Iraqis
have begun to demonstrate against the U.S. occupation, leading U.S. troops
to open fire on unarmed civilians, killing many. This has added other
crimes for which the U.S. government of assassins will have to answer
before a people's tribunal when the toiling masses of the world take power,
as we surely will one day.
The looting of museums and
libraries is a typical story of white imperial marauders that stretches
back through the annals of history. Hospitals and morgues are filled with
the maimed bodies of Iraqis who fell victim to the highly developed U.S.
war technology. This technology is enabled by a U.S. war budget that is
larger than the next 20 countries combined.
There is hardly an Iraqi who
has not suffered as a consequence of the U.S. colonial invasion.
However, there are daily reports of resistance: sporadic attempts at ambushes
of U.S. troops; the stoning or execution of Iraqi puppets who support
the U.S. occupation; the call for united resistance between the Shia and
Sunni Muslims, etc.
U.S. aggression not limited
to Iraq; Opposition to U.S. imperialism growing
Nevertheless, the fact is that the Iraqis cannot be expected to carry
this battle against imperialism alone. This understanding requires recognition
that it is not enough for us to simply talk about peace. Iraq is just
one of the more obvious examples of U.S. imperial aggression. U.S. military
forces are at work in Colombia and the Philippines and a wide range of
arenas in Mother Africa.
Moreover, the U.S. is attempting
to subvert the Venezuelan process and is threatening to rachet up its
historical aggression against Cuba.
Within the Middle East, Syria
is being targeted by U.S. war mongers. The Palestine Liberation Organization
cannot prostrate itself enough before the U.S. and its white nationalist
military outpost of Israel to satisfy the Bush regime's demand for complete
capitulation as a condition for achieving a neo-colonial statehood.
The outstanding lesson of this
latest era of struggle, as crystallized by the occupation of Iraq, is
the growing politicization of millions of peoples around the world in
opposition to imperialism and the general lack of revolutionary organization
that could give consequential leadership to the masses.
Peace movement must support
national liberation and self-determination
Within the U.S., this politicization, as it is concentrated in opposition
to the Bush regime's policy of war and occupation, has been generally
incapable of criticizing U.S. imperialism as a system. It can criticize
various acts of U.S. imperialism while at the same time make excuses for
U.S. imperialism itself. Therefore, the peace movement, as such, is generally
a lily-white exercise in protecting the imperial status quo, while protesting
the obvious use of imperial violence to do so.
It is a peace movement that
refuses to recognize the attack on Iraq as an attempt to protect the international
economic arrangement that feeds Europe and North America at the expense
of the toiling masses of the world. It is the ongoing struggles of the
toiling masses for national liberation and self-determination that have
created the crisis that the Bush regime is attempting to solve for all
imperialists — including its feuding partners of France and Germany.
It is a peace movement that
refuses to recognize that Iraq is part of an historical trajectory that
flows from the theft of the land of the native people of the U.S. and
the historical capture, enslavement and domestic colonization of African
people within current borders of the U.S.
The real struggle begins now
with the colonial occupation of Iraq. The significance of the peace movement
within the U.S. and the world will be determined by its ability to move
beyond the issue of peace and join the world in demanding national liberation
and self-determination.
For revolutionary African Internationalists
and others, we must assume our responsibility now to take advantage of
the current crisis of imperialism and the extraordinarily rich political
environment that it is providing.
We must lead. It is that simple.
We must intervene in the political
arena provided us by this naked colonial aggression by U.S. white power
and win our own people to conscious involvement in the struggle for African
liberation, independence, unification and socialism. We must build the
African People's Socialist Party and the African Socialist International.
Izwe Lethu i Afrika!
(Africa is our Land!)
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