------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the July 1, 2004 issue of Workers World newspaper -------------------------
"OPERATION NEW DAWN": NEW NAME, NEW FACE, SAME OLD OCCUPATION By Fred Goldstein June 22--As the June 30 deadline approaches for the great turnover of "sovereignty" in Iraq to the puppet government selected by Washington, the Bush administration is struggling on a number of fronts. It is trying to shed the appearance of occupier while maintaining 138,000 troops in the country. The U.S. military chiefs are preparing for "Operation New Dawn," in which they will try to maintain a low profile during the period of the "handover." But regardless of appearances, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz was forced to admit in testimony before the House Armed Services Committee, when pressed by Rep. Ike Skelton of Missouri, that U.S. troops could be there "a good number of years." Wolfowitz had just returned from a five-day visit in which he spent considerable time with the former CIA agent turned prime minister, Ayad Allawi. Wolfowitz has been the prime advocate of using the establishment of democracy as a cover for the invasion and takeover of Iraq. Shortly after Wolfowitz concluded his conversations with Allawi, the puppet prime minister announced that he was considering the declaration of martial law in regions where the resistance is strong est, like Falluja, Najaf, Karbala and other areas. Allawi got further instructions from Wolfowitz on reorganizing the puppet Civil Defense Forces and so-called Iraqi Army into a counter-revolutionary force to combat the resistance. But considering the inability of 150,000 imperialist occupation forces to subdue the growing resistance, the prospects for Washington's puppet forces to take over the job seem difficult to impossible. And every Iraqi who aids or associates with the occupation regime becomes a target as an instrument of colonial oppression. Four U.S. Marines were killed in Ramadi on June 20 when their patrol was ambushed. Two U.S. soldiers were killed and one wounded in Balad, north of Baghdad. On the same day two Iraqis working with the occupation were killed and one wounded on the road to the Baghdad airport. Also five Iraqis who worked for a foreign company were killed and two were wounded south of Mosul when their convoy hit a roadside bomb. Six Iraqi police were wounded when a mortar hit near the central bank in Baghdad. The head of the city council of Ramadi was assassinated. Dozens of officials have been assassinated recently. COLLABORATORS WITH U.S. HIDE BEHIND ARMED GUARDS The occupation has appointed an elaborate network of local councils. But these councils are viewed more and more as mec hanisms of the colonizers. The June 22 Washington Post described the growing resistance to this U.S.-imposed structure. "For months, the Rashid district council avoided the violence that had plagued other groups. In the district as a whole, five neighborhood council members have been assassinated this year. In Sadr City, a large Shiite slum, the chairman of the district council was killed and strung from a pole. A sign hanging from his neck accused him of being an American spy. "Local council members who once welcomed constituents into their homes now keep armed guards at the front gate. Leaders of the national government travel in armored vehicles and work inside Baghdad's fortified Green Zone, an area off-limits to ordinary Iraqis. Many foreign contractors hired by the U.S. government to promote democracy have either relocated to Kuwait or hunkered down in protected compounds. "Despite these precautions," continued the Post, "over the past two weeks, the deputy foreign minister and a senior official in the Education Ministry have been assassinated. On Sunday, masked gunmen shot and killed the council chairman of Baghdad's Rusafa district and his deputy." While much of the capitalist media show their discontent and disillusionment with the Bush-Pentagon occupation and bombard the occupation authority with criticism, they are walking a careful line not to make the growing U.S. casualties and the widening resistance into major headlines whenever they can avoid it. The big business media and the entire ruling-class political establishment are torn between wanting to criticize and wanting to help the transition to the puppet regime succeed. Above all, the media have toned down their reporting of U.S. casualties. While they used to report almost daily the number of U.S. troops killed in action, they rarely announce the body count now that the official number is appproaching 850. The main thrust against the Bush administration is the exposure of torture. The revelation of the Justice Department's memo of last April, which basically declared that the president has the right to order torture, has created a storm. The Bush administration's answer has been to release a pile of documents that did not order torture--which is the classical form of subterfuge. It reveals nothing about what was ordered, in writing or by other means. KOREAN PEOPLE OPPOSE PARTICIPATING IN OCCUPATION Washington's effort to dragoon the South Korean military into its colonial war was dealt a political blow with the seizure of Kim Sun Il, a Korean translator working with the occupation in Falluja. The incident has provoked a storm of outrage among the people of South Korea against both the U.S. and their own government. The South Korean people are overwhelmingly opposed to participating in the colonial occupation force. The Korean Democratic Labor Party, the voice of the growing anti-U.S. political opposition in South Korean society, called upon the government to revoke its decision to send troops, declaring it would be an "outrage to the nation if they insist on the military deployment while seeing a citizen's life at stake." (Al Jazeera, June 21) In addition, the Korean Network Against Dispatching Troops to Iraq, a network of 365 Korean organizations, lent its weight to the demand against deployment, stating that "The Korean people are well aware of the fact the U.S. invaded Iraq for domination and oil, and not for the freedom and peace of the Iraqi people." It declared that while "threatening a private citizen with death ... will not contribute to Iraqi peace ... the Iraqi people are right to resist the U.S.'s unjust invasion, occupation and carnage." Meanwhile, in the U.S., while the quagmire deepened, the House of Represen tatives quietly and without fanfare handed over $417 billion to the Pentagon by a vote of 403-17. This exceeds the combined military spending of the 10 next-highest countries. While the Democratic Party has denoun ced the Bush administration's strategy for war and occupation as inept and disastrous, the vast majority of Demo crats in Congress have voted to fund the occupation they have criticized. Thus the Democrats have proven once again that, when push comes to shove and it's time to ante up for war, they are as loyal to U.S. imperialism, its military establishment and its struggle for colonial domination as are the Republicans. The best way to end the war in Iraq is not to vote for John Kerry but to vote in the streets and in the struggle--against both Bush and the Democrats, who want to fix the mess that imperialism has gotten itself into by making the occupation work. - END - (Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but changing it is not allowed. For more information contact Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe wwnews- [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe [EMAIL PROTECTED] Support the voice of resistance http://www.workers.org/orders/donate.php) ------------------ This message is sent to you by Workers World News Service. To subscribe, E-mail to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, E-mail to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To switch to the DIGEST mode, E-mail to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Send administrative queries to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
