Mass protest, armed attacks send clear message:
U.S. OUT OF IRAQ!
By John Catalinotto
Massive demonstrations, armed actions against
U.S. and other troops, and a direct assault on U.S.
headquarters in Baghdad have shown once again that the Iraqi
resistance to foreign occupation remains a painful obstacle to
Washing ton's expansionist plans.
A reported 100,000 members of the Shiite community
demonstrated in Bagh dad Jan. 19, marching three miles to the
University of al-Mustansariyah. A simi lar demonstration of
30,000 had taken place Jan. 15 in Basra in the south of the
country. The protesters' main demand was direct elections of an
Iraqi government to replace the Coalition Authority.
Shiite religious leader Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani,
speaking for the Shiite community, has rejected the present
U.S. plan to impose a provisional legislature selected by 18
regional caucuses. Al-Sistani wants national elections where
Iraqis can elect their leaders directly, something Washington
wants to postpone until at least 2005.
When a spokesperson for Al-Sistani raised these demands in
Baghdad, the crowd responded by chanting: "Yes, yes to
elections. No, no to occupation."
This hostile reaction to U.S. authority is among the Shiite
community, which U.S. analysts always claim is the sector of
Iraqi Arabs most favorable to the U.S. intervention.
Resistance continues
The Iraqi resistance has continued to carry out armed
attacks on the 130,000 U.S. troops and their 40,000 or so
allied forces throughout Iraq. On Jan. 17, a bomb that exploded
under a Bradley Fighting Vehicle killed three U.S. troops and
three Iraqi "Civil Defense Forces."
The three U.S. dead raised the number of U.S. troops killed
in Iraq since the March 20, 2003, invasion to 500. This is more
than the number of U.S. troops killed in the first four years
of U.S. intervention in Vietnam, between 1961 to 1965.
Other reports noted that 14 U.S. helicopters have already
been shot down and that Iraqi fighters are getting more skilled
in using the rocket launchers that can bring them down.
In addition to those killed, there have been 3,000 U.S.
troops wounded badly enough to be evacuated. Thousands more
have been sent away for treatment of illnesses. Perhaps an even
more significant number is the 21 suicides among U.S.
troops.
A 1,000-pound car bomb detonated Jan. 18 near the gate to
the U.S. headquarters in Baghdad, killing more than 30 people,
some of them reportedly Iraqis wanting to work with the
occupation. Two U.S. contract employees may have been killed in
the blast.
This guerrilla attack demonstrated the complete lack of
security for anyone who cooperates with the U.S. occupiers.
Changing tactics
To try to recover the initiative, the U.S. command has
carried out more severely repressive and murderous actions
against the Iraqis, especially within the so-called Sunni
triangle to the north and west of Baghdad. This has led to more
Iraqi civilians being arrested, beaten and murdered by the
nervous U.S. troops, who see the entire population as their
enemy.
The Pentagon has also begun to carry out the greatest and
most rapid replacement of troops since World War II. This
movement will repatriate the 130,000 troops, most of whom have
been in the field for a year and are anxious to get home. Some
105,000 new troops are supposed to replace them over the four
months until May 2004.
Some 39,000 of the new fresh troops will be reservists,
wrenched out of their jobs and from their families and plunged
into a nightmare none had ever imagined when they joined
up.
The officers have ordered 25,000 Marines to the "triangle"
to replace the 101st Airborne troops. There they are supposed
to carry out tactics similar to those used in Vietnam to win
the "hearts and minds" of the Iraqis.
In Vietnam this was done by trying to discover who the local
political leadership was and then murdering them. The
Vietnamese won despite this slaughter.
With the change in troops will come a change in equipment:
more lighter, faster vehicles, more Humvees, fewer tanks and
Bradley Armored Vehicles.
A Knight-Ridder reporter wrote in a feature story that all
Iraqis, from college students to cab drivers, are using the
archaic word "Ulooj" to refer to U.S. troops. The ancient term
from Arabic literature can be translated as pigs of the desert,
foreign infidels, little donkeys, medieval crusaders,
bloodsuckers and horned creatures.
Reprinted from the Jan. 29, 2004, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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