Iraq: A permanent war crime

The Bush administration is making believe that it is in control in Iraq. After waging a criminal war and occupation, killing over a million Iraqis, turning five million others into refugees, destroying the infrastructure of what was previously a prosperous land and promoting that land’s division into warring groups, Washington is now trying to permanently seize the fruits of victory from a war it lost.

For U.S. imperialism did lose that war. Despite the overwhelming weight of U.S. weapons, despite the lack of support from neighboring countries, despite the lack of a safe base from which it can organize a political struggle, despite the difficulties in establishing a unified national liberation front, the Iraqi resistance has stopped the U.S. occupiers cold. There is no stable puppet government to control Iraq for U.S. imperialism. Since the 1950s the Iraqis have proven over and over that they refuse to submit to foreign rule, even when they face the best-armed military in the world. With remarkable heroism under the most difficult circumstances, they have proven this once again.

Indeed, the world owes the Iraqi people a debt. Their resistance has not only defended the honor of Iraq, it has demoralized the U.S. ground troops, stretched the volunteer U.S. Army to its limits and discouraged the Pentagon from launching further actions that involve seizing and occupying territory.

Now the U.S.-based oil giants, already raking in tens of billions of dollars each year—Exxon cleared over $11 billion its last quarter, want privileged long-term leases to exploit Iraqi oil. The military-industrial complex wants to continue its theft from the U.S. treasury and to continue supplying a puppet Iraqi army. And the Pentagon brass plan permanent U.S. bases. Washington wants a pact to make this exploitation permanent.

There is no way under international law that an agreement between an occupied nation and the occupying power can be considered legitimate. In June the puppet Premier Maliki agreed to the pact that would put all those rotten deals in place. But the puppet Iraqi Parliament has stalled its ratification.

No solid majority of Iraqi politicians, even in the puppet regime, seems ready to sign away Iraqi natural resources to U.S. imperialist oil firms or to just hand over Iraqi sovereignty. Perhaps that should not be a surprise. Everyone knows the contingent of 150,000 U.S. troops and about the same number of mercenaries—called “contractors” these days—will have to leave sooner or later. Iraqi traitors will then be unprotected and very unpopular.

These days, after five and a half years of occupation, news from Iraq barely makes it into the media. The bombings are rarer, so is news of casualties among U.S. troops, in part because everyone is waiting for political changes in Washington and with U.S. policy. Already 75 percent of the people oppose the war, including most soldiers. But a war crime remains a war crime, and the Bush administration is as guilty of launching a war of aggression as were the Nazi leaders in 1939. They owe the Iraqis reparations to rebuild their country, and they owe the world the satisfaction of paying for their crimes.