– Girish Ghildiyal
U NDERGROUND resistance movement against the US occupation is giving sleepless nights to Bush’s administration. Gone is the arrogance of early April. The same Bush & Co. that mocked at UN as being irrelevant when it did not authorise unilateral use of force, is back at UN trying to get some legitimacy, forces and funds.
Patronising calls of Iraq being “our new baby,” our “51st state”; of U.S. forces being “parents.” giving Iraqis a “a firm hand guiding them” or “Shock and awe” being not just for war-making but “an everyday tool for running this place” etc., have given way to desperation at not being able to control the situation. Now one hears of plans of withdrawing by the end of first half of next year and setting up of “provisional Iraqi Government”. It is a tribute to the resilience of Iraqi people that they have, despite a decade of privation and forced penury, humbled the overfed US Gorilla by sheer determination and guts.
There have been no crowds dancing in the street to welcome the “liberators”. Save for a stage-managed incident of bringing down of Saddam’s statue, there has been no event of any popular support for US troops during or after the war. Instead, one hears more about news items of panicky US soldiers firing at unarmed civilians. Theunderground movement has support of large sections of Iraqi people who are angered by the occupation and loot of their nations natural wealth by the US.
It is this resistance by Iraqi people which has discredited both Bush and Blair in their country. As the postwar death toll has mounted so has the questions over the doctored intelligence reports which formed excuses to wage the war in the first place. It is has now been proved that Bush and Blair administrations systematically lied about the extent of Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction programs, the threat of an imminent attack from Hussein, and that Hussein was connected to al-Qaeda and the 9/11 atrocity. In Britain a government WMD expert, David Kelly committed suicide in connection to revelations about government lies, causing a crisis for the Tony Blair government.
The Democratic Party politicians are now chiding Bush for lying about WMDs and the post-war fiascos. There is a Congressional probe into pre-war intelligence gathering on Iraq enquiry where Republicans are accusing Democrats of trying to use a US Congressional probe to wage a political attack against President George Bush. Within the administration there is considerable strain over who should be blamed for mishandling of postwar Iraq. In the early days, Rumsfeld carried weight. It is now the turn of Powell. Sharing the burden of Iraqi reconstruction and on troops and international acceptance are the core of new approach of US. Iraq has once again proved that no power however big can ever ride roughshod over will of the masses. It is the masses alone that can foil the designs of the new empire.