Five Years of Bloody Imperialist Occupation

All U.S. Troops Out of Iraq Now!

APRIL 8—After five years of imperialist war and occupation, Iraq, once one of the more advanced countries in the Near East, has been reduced to a living hell by American rulers with the mind-set of “born again” biblical primitives and the technology of 21st-century industrial capitalism. Over one million Iraqis have lost their lives either at the hands of the imperialist occupiers or in the sectarian and communal bloodbath that was unleashed by “Operation Iraqi Freedom.” Four million Iraqis have fled their homes, 70 percent of the population lacks access to clean drinking water, and more than half lives on less than one dollar a day. Following a trip to Baghdad by Republican vice president Dick Cheney in March, such “peace” as the U.S. imperialists had literally purchased through buying an army of 90,000 Sunnis called the “Sons of Iraq” and a cease-fire deal with the Shi’ite Mahdi Army of Moqtada al-Sadr, blew up.

Hoping to piece off the Sunni population, which massively boycotted the 2005 elections, Cheney put the arm on the Iraqi puppet government to call elections that would allow the Sunni leaders to gain control of provinces where Sunnis are a majority. This was followed by the massive assault on the oil-rich Shi’ite city of Basra, Iraq’s main export point in the south, by Iraqi government troops backed up with air and artillery bombardment by U.S. and British imperialist forces. The purpose was to disarm and defeat al-Sadr’s forces, which would easily sweep any elections in Basra, as opposed to the Shi’ite Dawa party of Iraqi prime minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki and his coalition partners in the Islamic Supreme Council. Meanwhile, the U.S. military has launched an assault on Sadr City in Baghdad, which is run by al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army, in an attempt to stop the mortar and rocket attacks raining down on the U.S.-controlled Green Zone.

Bush hailed the assault on Basra—where tens of thousands of families were trapped in their homes for a week without electricity or water and unknown hundreds killed—as a “positive moment in the development of a sovereign nation” (London Guardian, 4 April). This was echoed by British Labour Party prime minister Gordon Brown, who announced that there would be no further reduction in British troops in Basra with the Orwellian declaration: “What is happening in Basra is a manifestation of our policy to give Iraqis control of their own security” (Guardian, 2 April).

But this offensive blew up in the faces of the Iraqi government and its imperialist masters. More than 1,000 Iraqi soldiers and police, including dozens of officers and at least two commanders, deserted. Al-Maliki scrambled to recruit 10,000 more Shi’ite troops, further inflaming the Sunnis, to whom the government has resisted giving positions in the army. It took the intervention of Iran to broker a cease-fire between the Iraqi government and al-Sadr, who emerged as the victor. Al-Sadr is now calling for mass protests against the occupation on April 9 in order to increase his leverage for a seat at the imperialists’ table. Meanwhile, the stage is set for increasing communal slaughter, which is currently measured in a death toll of 1,500 Iraqis a month.

As revolutionary Marxists in the belly of the imperialist beast, we demand the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Iraq and Afghanistan. Just as we took a side in defense of Afghanistan and Iraq against the U.S. invaders while politically opposing the Taliban reactionaries and Saddam Hussein’s bloody capitalist regime, we have a side today: against the U.S. occupiers and their allies. Insofar as the forces on the ground in Iraq aim their fire at the occupiers and their Iraqi lackeys, we call for their military defense against U.S. imperialism, while vehemently opposing Islamic fundamentalism, nationalism and the communal slaughter devastating the Iraqi population.

Our starting point is the understanding that wars of imperialist depredation and occupations are the necessary product of the capitalist system. War is the concentrated expression of a profit system that daily slaughters workers on the job, that consigns millions to the scrap heap, that metes out brutal, racist cop repression. Imperialism is capitalism in its death agony, in which a handful of advanced powers compete for control of markets, raw materials and access to cheap labor. To get rid of war, poverty and oppression, the entire capitalist system must be overthrown through workers revolutions in the U.S. and internationally.

Our revolutionary perspective stands in stark contrast to that of the reformists and their various antiwar coalitions. Responding to the launching of the one-sided slaughter of Iraq, the reformists peddled the lie that if millions mobilized, they could pressure the imperialist rulers, particularly in their Democratic Party face, to serve the “will of the people.” Contrary to this bourgeois-democratic myth, the policies of U.S. imperialism are determined not by the electorate but by the interests of the capitalist ruling class, as overseen by the Republicans and Democrats alike. There is, indeed, deepgoing discontent over the Iraq occupation among broad sectors of the U.S. population, further exasperated by the deepening economic downturn. But the tens of thousands who came out in protest against the war five years ago have long since evaporated, dissolved by the reformists’ “Anybody but Bush,” pro-Democratic Party electoralism.

The Democrats’ calls for a “phased withdrawal” of “combat troops” from Iraq (while maintaining bases in the country) reflect the understanding of the more rational wing of the bourgeoisie that the Iraq occupation is a quagmire, in which the interests of U.S. imperialism are threatened. At the same time, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, the two contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination, compete in trying to out-Bush Bush as proponents of the “war on terror,” with calls to increase U.S. imperialist forces in the occupation of Afghanistan. After the failed assault on al-Sadr’s forces in Basra, the Democratic chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Ike Skelton, joined the Bush administration in rattling the nuclear saber against Iran.

The London Telegraph (5 April) cited “a strong statement” by General David Petraeus, commander of American forces in Iraq, that “Iran’s intervention in Iraq could set the stage for a US attack on Iranian military facilities.” Opining that “there are signs that targeting Iran would unite American politicians across the bitter divide on Iraq,” the article pointed to Skelton’s declaration that “Iran is the bull in the china shop.” In the event of an attack by the U.S. or any force acting as its proxy (Israel, for example), the international proletariat must stand for the military defense of Iran while giving no political support to the reactionary mullah-led regime. As we have repeatedly stressed, in the face of imperialist nuclear blackmail and continuing threats of attack, Iran needs nuclear weapons and adequate delivery systems as deterrence. Hands off Iran!

A statement by the Political Bureau of the Spartacist League/U.S., section of the International Communist League, in response to the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, declared: “With the world’s mightiest empire arrayed against neocolonial Iraq, it could not be clearer that the chief means of defending Iraq is through international class struggle, particularly in the United States” (see “Defend Iraq Against U.S./British Attack!” WV No. 800, 28 March 2003). Now the ILWU longshore union is calling for an eight-hour work stoppage on May 1 in opposition to the war. We are all in favor of a work stoppage to demand that all U.S. troops get out of Iraq. But this action is being built by the ILWU International bureaucracy through social-patriotic appeals to “express support for the troops by bringing them home safely,” and comes together with the ILWU’s endorsement of Barack Obama.

Labor cannot be mobilized in class struggle against the bloody depredations of the American capitalist rulers abroad when it is chained to the parties and armed forces of U.S. imperialism! The social power of the multiracial working class must be mobilized against the capitalist system that breeds war. To this end, it is necessary to forge a new class-struggle leadership of the unions linked to the building of a revolutionary workers party to lead the fight for workers power through international socialist revolution. Break with the Democrats! For a class-struggle workers party! Defeat U.S. imperialism through workers revolution!