U.S. spurs Iraq's 'sectarian violence'

One of the main reasons to keep U.S. troops in Iraq, say apologists for the ferocious U.S. occupation of that country, is to stabilize a government representing all Iraqis and prevent a bloodbath between Sunnis and Shias, which they say would be inevitable once U.S. forces left. Such arguments are coming from both sides of the aisle in Congress.

This professed concern by Washington and the Pentagon for the Iraqi people—instead of for their oil—could not be further from the truth. In fact, this argument turns reality on its head. Since their invasion of Iraq, imperialist strategists have done everything possible to turn Iraqis against each other and keep them from uniting against the foreign invaders—primarily the U.S. and Britain.

While the current U.S. position is to maintain the fiction of a central Iraqi government in Baghdad, it is also known that other plans on the drawing board include partitioning the country into three separate entities: a Kurdish north, a predominantly Sunni center, and a Shia south. Most of Iraq’s oil is in the north and south, not in the central region that includes Baghdad, where there is the largest concentration of people.

After several years of focusing on “pacifying”—that is, virtually destroying—cities in central Iraq like Fallujah that are considered strongholds of the resistance, the U.S. and Britain have in recent weeks been concentrating their firepower on Sadr City in Baghdad and Basra in the south—both areas where the Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr has a very strong following.

On April 9, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis had rallied in Najaf, south of Baghdad, in support of al-Sadr after his party withdrew from the Iraqi parliament. It was a huge rebuff to the occupation and was followed by many U.S. attacks on his followers. Al-Sadr then went underground. The imperialist media were rife with speculation that he had gone to Iran, which was being accused of giving support to elements of the Iraqi resistance. Both Al-Sadr’s followers and the Iranian government deny he was in Iran.

On May 25, however, al-Sadr surfaced briefly in Kufa, where he again called on all Iraqis to unite to get U.S. troops out of Iraq. The very next day, the U.S. called in air strikes on densely populated Sadr City and Basra.

The Washington Post had reported on May 20 that many Sunni leaders had already responded favorably to this call and that there are good prospects for unity against the occupiers. This is exactly what the Pentagon fears the most.

It is probably just a matter of time until some of the truth comes out about clandestine U.S. operations to blow up mosques or other targets in Iraq in order to enflame sectarian passions. But that should not be surprising.

It took years, but government sources finally admitted that, during the Vietnam War, South Vietnamese allied to the U.S. were ordered to put on the garb of National Liberation Front fighters and then attack villages, where they committed horrible atrocities. At the time, articles immediately appeared in the corporate media blaming the “V.C.” and were flashed around the world. It was a brutal and cynical attempt to undercut the immense popular support for the Vietnamese patriots fighting foreign domination, but it failed.

The extent of war crimes committed by U.S. troops themselves in Vietnam is still being revealed. In August 2006, the Los Angeles Times ran a series based on declassified Pentagon documents that admitted to over 300 incidents in which U.S. troops “murdered, raped and tortured with impunity.” The Times said that these crimes “were not confined to a few rogue units. ... They were uncovered in every Army division that operated in Vietnam.” Soldiers who blew the whistle on many of these crimes said that orders to “kill anything that moves” came from higher up and were not just the actions of individuals.

How many of these murders were attributed to the liberation forces?

When the U.S. imperialists had designs on conquering all Southeast Asia, north and south Vietnamese were presented as antagonistic to one another. In fact, the problem was the occupiers. Today, Vietnam is one.

Iraqis will be able to solve their own problems, once the U.S. and British colonial occupiers are finally forced to leave.

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