APRIL 12—In the aftermath of the uprisings centered in the Arab Sunni city of Falluja, in the slums of Baghdad, and in Kut, Najaf and other cities in the Shi'ite south of Iraq, George W. Bush, from an unspecified location in Arkansas, said of his colonial subjects in Iraq: "It's going to take awhile for them to understand what freedom is all about" (Chicago Tribune, 7 April). The language of this "educational" experience has been a constant barrage of lies about self-rule and freedom. Its arithmetic has been in the thousands of deaths—over 600 in Falluja alone. The siege of Falluja is the bloody price that the Americans have exacted in retaliation for the killings of four mercenaries ("civilian contractors" in Bushspeak).

The savage U.S. occupation has not endeared the 70 percent of Iraq's population that remains unemployed and mired in abject poverty to their newly won "freedom." Scenes from the last week: AC-130 gunships and attack helicopters firing on heavily populated urban centers; the bombing of mosques during afternoon prayers; missiles fired into residential buildings; tanks mowing down unarmed civilians; bodies littered the streets as Marines rampaged house to house. Marine commander Lt. Col. Brennan Byrne put it right on the line: "Their only choices are to submit or die" (Newsday, 11 April). The "liberators" have sparked a widespread struggle against the occupation. The brutal British occupation of Iraq at the conclusion of World War I took three years to accomplish what the U.S. has in months: the unity of Sunni and Shi'ite against the imperialist occupiers—for the moment.

The colonial carnage will not end as long as the U.S. imperialist forces, from the "coalition" allies to the 15,000 mercenaries and CIA agents, are in Iraq. They must get out, now! But the imperialists will not give up their domination of the region until they are forced to by working-class struggle, both at home in the imperialist centers and in the Near East. Bush & Co. have no plan, and have never had any plan, to militarily vacate Iraq. Reportedly the CIA anticipated a Sunni/Shi'ite uprising since January of this year. Subsequently, U.S. occupation chief Paul Bremer's aggressive actions against Falluja and Shi'ite cleric Moktada al-Sadr provoked the uprising. In the weeks before the deaths of the four mercenaries in Falluja, construction began on 14 "enduring" bases for the 110,000 U.S. soldiers scheduled to remain in Iraq for "years." Bremer issued an order placing the Iraqi army under the direct command of U.S. Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, while the puppet Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) announced that a U.S.-appointed security adviser would stay in office for five years after the supposed transfer of power to the Iraqi Governing Council on June 30.

Simultaneously, Bremer moved to establish "independent" regulators with essential veto power over Iraqi government ministries while passing a law, unchangeable under the terms of the interim constitution, opening Iraq's economy to foreign ownership—this as the CPA announced that funds for reconstructing Iraq would be administered by the U.S. embassy, the largest in the world, appropriately lodged in Saddam Hussein's presidential palace. What was to be left under the control of the stooge government was the decrepit hospital system, devastated during the more than 12-year-long UN-sponsored blockade that preceded the 2003 U.S. attack. U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson, who pioneered throwing poor people off welfare when he was governor of Wisconsin, said that the system could be rehabilitated if they "just washed their hands and cleaned the crap off the walls" (Naomi Klein, Nation, 19 April).

Bremer shut down Sadr's Baghdad newspaper, leveled his sharia court in Sadr City and arrested one of his leading aides. Not surprisingly, Sadr's photo is displayed in every part of Iraq south of the Kurdish area, including in sectors where the population is both prosperous and Arab Sunni, as well as on the plinth of the statue of Saddam Hussein dragged down by the American military just a year ago.

Perhaps Bremer's thought, if he had one, was to clear the existing obstacles to installation of the provisional government at the end of June. What has been accomplished is that Sunnis, who currently fear a reversal of the terms of oppression under Shi'ite-majority rule, and Shi'ites, who were dominated by the Sunnis under the regime of Saddam Hussein, today are uniting. The Wall Street Journal (12 April) reports: "Residents in many Baghdad neighborhoods signed up to host displaced families from Fallujah and banners and signs are posted at every corner declaring that the Sunni and Shi'ite forces are now unified." Thousands of Shi'ites joined a protest at a Sunni mosque against the American attacks; Shi'ites have donated blood for wounded Sunnis; Shi'ites organized to provide food for Sunni civilians trapped in the sealed city of Falluja without food, water or electricity.

With the evaporation of the Iraqi police and U.S.-trained Iraqi army—one of its four battalions refused to fight in Falluja and returned to the barracks—and with the fig leaf of Iraqi self-rule taking on the transparent qualities of cellophane, two Iraqi officials in the Governing Council have withdrawn in protest. The former Iraqi foreign minister, Adnan Pachachi, a member of the Governing Council and considered by the Americans one of their most trusted allies, denounced the sacking of Falluja. He described the American offensive as "mass punishment…. We consider these operations by the Americans to be unacceptable and illegal" (New York Times, 10 April).

It matters not at all what transpires on June 30. The American imperialists will perforce need to tighten their control over Iraq, which will likely promote future uprisings and an increasingly brutal response by its military. In 2002 Israel's Zionist rulers carried out a bloodbath of Palestinians in the West Bank town of Jenin; the Americans have carried out destruction equivalent to several Jenin massacres in Falluja alone, and that comparison is not gratuitous. Writing in the London Guardian (9 April), Sami Ramadani reports on "the Pentagon's Israeli-trained special assassination squads" and notes, "the streets of Baghdad, Falluja and the southern cities resemble those of occupied Palestine. Sharon-style tactics and brutality are now the favoured methods of the US-led occupation forces—including the torture of prisoners, who now number well over 10,000."

Democrats Promise a Prolonged Occupation

In the U.S., people are increasingly disturbed by the returning body bags and disenchanted with the repeated bland retailing of only slightly repackaged old lies by Bush, Rumsfeld and Rice in response to the pervasive evidence that the invasion of Iraq had nothing at all to do with terrorism or "weapons of mass destruction," just as the subsequent occupation has nothing at all to do with democracy. This has an impact especially on working people faced with a jobless recovery and attendant attacks on their living standards. Bush and the neocons' delusional projections of an effortless installation of a puppet regime, as simple as opening a McDonald's franchise, are now shattered and the U.S. is in for a long, bloody occupation, moreover with the U.S. Armed Forces seriously undermanned. Given the continued unemployment on the home front, Bush can run for re-election only as a stern and righteous (if slightly stupid) god, a posture that appeals to the reborn Christian right in the Republican Party.

In this context, one would think that Democratic presidential candidate Senator John Kerry would be a shoo-in in November. The Iraq war and occupation have been so closely identified in the public mind with the Bush regime that increasing numbers of Americans now distrust anything that comes out of the government's mouth, and many of those opposed to the occupation have turned to the Democrats. Kerry is in effect now running as a war candidate. In a February 27 address at UCLA, Kerry said, "And to replenish our overextended military, as President, I will add 40,000 active-duty Army troops, a temporary increase likely to last the remainder of the decade." In an interview with Time magazine, (7 March press release), Kerry pledged that as president he would stay the course in Iraq. The Democrats, both in the primaries and in the current hearings on September 11, attack Bush for failing to prosecute the "war on terror" with sufficient vigor. This so-called "war" in fact has as its primary thrust an attack on the rights of all—from immigrants to those who would protest the war to workers whose right to strike is under attack. In fact, historically, the Democrats have been the preferred party of war because they feign to speak for the interests of working people.

In the aftermath of the 1991-92 destruction of the bureaucratically degenerated workers state in the USSR, the American imperialist rulers, whether of Democratic or Republican persuasion, moved to realize their aspirations to tighten control of the Near East. At the expense of their imperialist rivals, the U.S. rulers seek to control the bulk of the world's oil reserves and to project power throughout the region. Not surprisingly, France and Germany oppose Washington's play for increasing dominance. Also of concern to the U.S. is Russia, which retains its nuclear capacity. Ultimately, however, the imperialists have their sights set on China, intent on the overturn of the strongest of the remaining societies in which capitalism has been expropriated.

"Coalition of the Willing"… Less So

The American military forces have been stretched quite thin, as witnessed by the recent extension of tours of duty there and by the continuing use, for prolonged periods, of National Guardsmen in their 30s and 40s, as well as the increasing use of mercenary forces, now estimated to constitute 10 percent of the armed American/British presence. A recent army survey states that 72 percent of the soldiers report that morale in their unit is now low, as suicide rates among those in active duty are at an all-time high.

Last year there were almost 30,000 calls to the GI Rights Hotline, which provides information on getting out of the armed forces, and it has been estimated that between 600 and 1,700 soldiers have gone AWOL to avoid active duty. Two U.S. servicemen, Brandon Hughey and Jeremy Hinzman, have openly deserted, applying for refugee status in Canada, knowing full well that if they are turned down, in the context of the attack on the rights of all citizens under the auspices of the "war on terror," they could face execution (Village Voice, 7 April). In this context, the decision of Staff Sergeant Camilo Mejia to turn himself in to U.S. military authorities as a conscientious objector is more than courageous. Mejia stated, "I did not sign up for the military to go halfway around the world to be an instrument of oppression." In recent weeks, hundreds of veterans and family members of military personnel have demonstrated in opposition to the war.

Moreover, the combination of the criminal bombing in Madrid, evidently perpetrated by Islamic reactionaries, and the more than justified uprising against the American colonial presence in Iraq have reverberated through those countries that constitute the "Coalition of the Willing." The Ukrainian troops in Kut abandoned the city. With the exception of the British component, the forces sent by other U.S. allies are militarily insignificant (and, thus, extremely vulnerable to attack). Several of the countries involved have lent their support to American imperialism in the face of considerable domestic opposition to the war. The pro-Bush government in Spain was thrown out in the recent elections and Blair in Britain, Berlusconi in Italy and Koizumi in Japan are increasingly challenged over an occupation few see in the interest of their respective countries. The continued unraveling of backing by these countries would certainly fuel increasing disenchantment with the occupation in the U.S. Colin Powell has been given the unhappy assignment of trying to mobilize UN and NATO support for the occupation. But unless the U.S. bends to French, German and Russian aspirations to partake in the spoils, such support will not be forthcoming.

For Workers Rule in the Near East and the U.S.!

Iraq is not Vietnam, where resistance to foreign domination combined with an uprising of workers and peasants succeeded in overthrowing capitalism. Iraq is not a nation, but an artificial state created by the British imperialists, its boundaries drawn up on a piece of paper in the aftermath of World War I. Decades ago in Iraq, the principal force for an anti-sectarian solution, the Communist Party, was devastated through the treachery of Stalinism and butchery of imperialist-backed Ba'athist regimes. Today, the Communist Party sits in the U.S. puppet Governing Council. With the Communist Party effectively destroyed, what was left behind was increasingly discredited Third World nationalism and reactionary Islamic fundamentalism.

The current resistance is mainly organized by Arab Sunni and Shi'ite tribal and religious leaders, elements that have not the least appetite to overturn existing social relations and that, absent the occupation, would seek to dominate each other as well as the Kurdish north. Kurds as a people constitute a nation that extends into Iran, Syria and Turkey as well as Iraq, and whose desire for national self-determination is just. The ICL stands for a Socialist Republic of United Kurdistan. Many Iraqi Kurds currently look with favor on the American occupation, as a guarantor against Arab reconquest. This sentiment has spread to Kurds in Syria, who demanded citizenship rights in a recent protest where many demonstrators chanted pro-American slogans. The Syrian regime responded with lethal force, killing at least eleven Kurds.

In Iraq today, the right of Kurdish self-determination cannot be addressed as long as it is subordinated to the U.S. occupation. The struggle for Kurdish independence can only go forward through intransigent opposition to the occupation. This necessarily means confrontation with the Kurdish nationalists of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and the Kurdistan Democratic Party, who collaborate with U.S. imperialism. History has never been kind to the Kurds when their leaders sell out to imperialism. The U.S. is opposed to even a semblance of self-determination for the Kurdish people. The imperialist carve-up of Kurdistan has served not only to dismember the Kurdish nation but to weaken those neocolonial states that got a share of the booty. And Washington intends to keep it that way.

The American colonial presence has and will continue to exacerbate and inflame the grievances among differing peoples and tribes and can lead only to internecine conflicts and bloodshed. Kurdish self-determination can only be effected through the agency of a working-class revolution, led by internationalist, Trotskyist, proletarian parties, that overturns all four of these capitalist regimes, unfurling the banner of liberation and freedom from nationalist oppression for the myriad peoples that make up the Near East. This, and our fight for emancipation of all the peoples of the region, is an application of the Trotskyist theory of permanent revolution which illustrates that in countries of belated capitalist development, genuine national liberation and other basic democratic rights can be achieved only through the victorious proletarian socialist revolution.

When the U.S. first captured Baghdad, the American media reveled in running film clips of impoverished Shi'ites in the ghetto of Saddam City welcoming Americans, reflecting illusions that U.S. troops would undo the repression the majority Shi'ites had suffered under Hussein's rule. Saddam City was renamed Sadr City and soon became a center of opposition to the American occupation. But under clerical domination the Shi'ites can only reverse the terms of oppression they experienced under Sunni domination. There will be no reconciliation of the ethnic, religious and national antagonisms short of proletarian socialist rule.

Shi'ite forces recently kidnapped and threatened to execute three Japanese civilians, one of whom is a young antiwar student researching the effects of depleted uranium on the population of Iraq. This hostage-taking in the supposed service of securing the departure of Japan's 500-plus troops from Iraq testifies to the desperation of the reactionary Islamist leadership. It also mimics the mindset of the American imperialist rulers who collectively punish the peoples of Iraq. The razing to the ground of the gypsy village of Kawlia by Moktada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army, supposedly undertaken because of that hamlet's notoriety as a haven for dancing and "loose" women, not only provides further testimony to such hostility to "outsiders" but stands as a warning to Iraqi women as to their fate under Shi'ite clerical rule.

Thus, while we of the International Communist League defend each and every blow against the imperialist occupiers of Iraq, we give no political support to reactionary clerical forces and warn against illusions that the victory of one or another of these elements could result in anything but further bloodshed and repression. Indeed, victorious proletarian revolution throughout the Near East requires a struggle to defeat religious fundamentalism of all stripes as well as the overthrow of the monarchs, generals, Zionist butchers, and other capitalist rulers. Marxists seek to mobilize the oppressed masses behind the power of the proletariat in struggle against colonial occupations, using workers mobilizations (strikes, hot-cargoing of military goods and troop transports) in the service of a revolutionary perspective against both the imperialist occupying forces and the domestic bourgeoisie. We are politically hostile to any other strategy as alien to our proletarian purpose.

American imperialism's drive for world domination is not the product of bad policies but of the inevitable thrust of the U.S. capitalist rulers to seek new sources for current and future profit. Their parties, the Democrats and Republicans, are united in this quest as they are in supporting America's capitalist rulers' "right" to further fatten their purses at whatever cost to working people here. To be sure, the Democrats are more prone to offer their sympathies as well as false promises to the unfortunate; but the erosion of incomes, of pensions, of health care and of employment has continued for the past several decades irrespective of which party was in power.