Mobilize to end the occupation

After months of consultation and preparation, on Dec. 6 the Iraq Study Group published a report that admitted the utter collapse of the U.S. attempt to take over Iraq. The ISG recommended training Iraqi forces—that is, “Iraqization” of the war over a drawn-out period—and negotiations with neighboring states and with resistance groups inside Iraq.

The Bush administration and its allies in the right-wing media, like the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post, soon condemned the study as a “surrender.” Bush, who still controls the state apparatus for the next 25 months, vowed to push on to “victory” in Iraq.

Anti-war voices in the United States of different political tendencies condemned the ISG proposals for offering no rapid end to the occupation. War opponents called instead for a popular mobilization to end the U.S. occupation of Iraq, and continued to attack the criminal Bush regime.

The ISG, which Congress set up on March 15, consists of five Democrats and five Republicans. Most are either former members of Congress or former key administrative officials in the federal government. All have a reputation in Washington as loyal guardians of U.S. imperialism’s strategic and economic interests.

James Baker, a close advisor to President George H.W. Bush and his secretary of state from 1989 to 1992, is considered the ISG’s key player. Baker co-chaired the ISG with Lee Hamilton, a leading Democratic politician. While they are both sharp opponents of the Bush regime’s tactics, the two share Bush’s strategic goal: imposing Washington and Wall Street’s domination on the Middle East and on the world.

An article in the Nov. 26 Washington Post described the ISG as “a panel outside the government trying to bail the United States out of a prolonged and messy war.” To do this the group first consulted with over 150 high-level civilian and military officials, including about two dozen from Iraq. Then they deliberated with numerous working committees to produce their report and its 79 recommendations.

The motivation for setting up the group, the driving force behind it, was the realization by larger and larger sections of the U.S. political, military and economic establishment that the invasion and occupation of Iraq had turned into a disaster, not only for the Iraqis but for Washington. Scattered through the report are phrases like “the situation in Iraq is grave and deteriorating,” “the situation in Baghdad and several provinces is dire” and “the global standing of the United States could be diminished.”

Although these descriptions reflect the impossibility for the U.S. to successfully set up a compliant and stable regime in Baghdad, the group’s recommendations are of a tentative nature, really half-measures. The report in general has the tone of a compromise document.

The ISG’s military proposal is to gradually withdraw combat troops—who are about one-quarter of the total U.S. troop strength—with these combat troops out by the first few months of 2008 “if conditions on the ground allow,” to replace these troops with “advisers,” and to pay increasing attention to training Iraqi forces. In other words, the proposal is Iraqization of the war that could drag out over a long period.

The ISG didn’t discuss what to do with the over 100,000 “contractors”—that is, mercenaries—who are operating for U.S. military and corporate interests in Iraq.

The ISG’s diplomatic recommendation is to step up the effort to involve Iraq’s neighbors in finding a solution and especially to negotiate with Syria and Iran. Within Iraq, the ISG recommended that the United States negotiate with all parties except al-Qaeda. That means negotiating with both Baathists and with Moqtada al-Sadr, the political leader of the Shiite based Mehdi Army.

Its economic recommendations are for more aid to Iraq. But the ISG couldn’t help also recommending that all subsidies to the population for buying Iraqi energy be dropped, and that oil reserves be privatized. (Recommendation 62)

This is a reminder of what the U.S. war to seize Iraq was all about. For all the talk about “democratizing” Iraq, the real goal of the Bush regime and of the U.S. ruling establishment was to seize the abundant, easily reached oil reserves and set up permanent military bases in this strategic area.

“Weapons of mass destruction,” “the hunt for al-Qaeda,” “bringing democracy” were only lies spread to win support for the war. Neither the ISG nor Bush will admit this.

The ISG rejected dividing Iraq into three separate states in majority Kurdish, Sunni Arab and Shiite Arab areas, saying it would wreak even more havoc on the country. This is Democratic Sen. Joe Biden’s plan.

The ISG also rejected any more drastic and sudden changes in U.S. policies. Militarily, this means no “precipitous withdrawal” of U.S. forces. “Precipitous” is defined as over the next six months—a proposal made by Rep. John Murtha much earlier.

It is a weakness within the center of the U.S. empire that there is no establishment political or military leader with the support and authority to clearly recognize the defeat in Iraq and carry out a retreat. While it is not a perfect analogy, when French colonialism was obviously defeated in its attempt to subjugate Algeria in the late 1950s, Gen. Charles de Gaulle—a consummate imperialist statesperson—was able to force the French ruling class to accept this defeat. No U.S. political figure has similar prestige.

Bush refuses to recognize defeat. He is instead looking around for alternate tactics from two other study groups, one attached to the State Department and one to the National Security Council.

The most likely outcomes are either a long, slow bloodletting in Iraq over years, or some dramatic and dangerous escalation that attempts to change the character of the war. President Richard Nixon, while drawing down U.S. forces in Vietnam from 1969 on, stepped up bombings of Laos, Cambodia and North Vietnam.

One possible side effect of Donald Rumsfeld’s exit from the Defense Department is that a major obstacle to troop increases in Iraq has been removed, since Rumsfeld strongly defended his concept of a streamlined military that was not dependent on a mass intervention of ground troops.

Anti-war forces say ‘mobilize!’

Occupation opponents —from the Troops Out Now Coalition on the anti-imperialist left, to left columnist Tom Hayden, to mainstream columnists like Bob Herbert in the New York Times— agree that the ISG recommendations are inadequate and that a rapid withdrawal is necessary.

TONC, the ANSWER Coalition and United for Peace and Justice have called for mass mobilizations to continue the struggle to demand an immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. Among other things, they demand that Congress stop funding the war.

TONC was especially sharp in condemning the Democratic Party’s “double cross” since the midterm elections, asserting in a statement: “We need to stop this war—not another dollar, not another casualty, not one more day. No timetables, no more commissions, no waiting for another election. We must take to the streets in unprecedented numbers and force them to bring the troops home now.”

TONC has called for a mass demonstration in Washington on March 17, 2007, the fourth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq.

A sentence in a key Dec. 10 New York Times article should send an alarming message to the anti-war movement: “The administration’s inclination to dismiss so many of the major findings of the bipartisan group sets the stage for what could

become a titanic struggle over Iraq policy.”

As long as the occupation continues, the Iraqis, the troops and the people from poor and working-class communities here in the United States will suffer from it.

The ISG’s failure to resolve the “titanic” internal ruling-class battle will create a need—and an opportunity—to arouse mass intervention independent of the Democratic and Republican Parties and take anti-war actions that go beyond expressing dissent to finally bring an end to the war and occupation.

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