Neither Oil, Nor Soil: Get the Occupation Forces out of Iraq

With the retreat of the Saddam Hussein regime, “Operation Iraqi Freedom” has moved into its second phase and we are now confronted with the stark reality of a barbaric American occupation of Iraq.
The war itself had failed to produce any illusion of “Iraqi freedom”. In no part of Iraq was there even a hint of a mass uprising by any section of the Iraqi population. Nor could the ‘embedded’ American media could not manufacture a single image of Iraqis welcoming American troops as their ‘cherished liberators’. Even the act of pulling down of the Saddam Hussein statue at Baghdad’s Firdous Square had to be accomplished by the American troops themselves with the help of a crane, Saddam’s face wrapped in an American flag. In a desperate bid to add a dash of frenzy to this spectacle of freedom, the American troops then organised groups of looters and arsonists to vandalise every glorious symbol of the world’s cradle of civilisation including Baghdad’s famous archeological museum and Koranic library. The only protected sites were the buildings that housed the ministries of oil and interior so that America had access to all strategic records related to oil and intelligence.
After subjecting Baghdad and other major Iraqi cities to days of systematic loot and vandalism, Washington has now got down to the business of governing Iraq. Heading the occupation regime is Mr. Jay Garner, a retired American general who is notorious for his close ties with Israel and is reportedly also the president of a company involved in the making of the patriot missile. But Garner and all his accomplices from the Pentagon and CIA have failed to discover an appropriate Karzai for Iraq. Attempts to cobble an Interim Iraqi Authority have however evoked strong opposition from within Iraq with thousands of people daily hitting the streets demanding first of all an immediate end to American occupation. Some taste of Iraqi freedom finally for the American ‘liberators’!
As for the economic component of Iraq’s reconstruction, plans had been drawn up even before the war for extensive rebuilding of post-Saddam Iraq under exclusive American tutelage. In January, while ways of ‘avoiding’ war were still being discussed at the United Nations, the American government had quietly asked companies to submit proposals for a reconstruction effort that would rival the rebuilding of Germany after the second world war in its ambition. US corporations like Haliburton and Bechtel, closely tied to the Bush presidency have secured massive contracts while America’s Agency for International Development (USAID) is seeking contractors for the running of Iraq’s seaports, international airport, clinics and schools and for revamping Iraq’s financial system, its agricultural sector and telecommunications. Needless to add, the entire ‘reconstruction’ expenses will be defrayed by Iraq. This is why George Bush has now asked the UN to lift sanctions on Iraq, so that Iraq and Iraq’s oil can be quickly integrated into the American scheme of free trade. Indeed, Iraq has been the biggest take-over target in decades for the American economy.
The importance of Iraq in the American ‘Project for a New American Century’ is of course not confined to Iraq and its fabled oil reserves. The occupation of Iraq – American troops are officially slated to stay in Iraq till the country is ready for an elected government – is meant to be merely a step towards a wider reshaping of the whole of West Asia. Pressure is already being mounted on Syria. Iran and Saudi Arabia too have been alerted about the unfolding American priorities. And the key step would possibly involve forcing Palestinians to accept a ‘solution’ of the Palestinian question on terms dictated by the US-Israel combine.
America’s war on Iraq marks a defining moment for the anti-globalisation movement. The protests that had begun as a global campaign against corporate globalisation in the latter half of the 1990s successfully snowballed in the early years of the new century into the biggest anti-war movement in history. And now as Washington vandalises and colonises Iraq, it is time for the peace marches to grow into a still more effective anti-imperialist resistance.