------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the June 19, 2003 issue of Workers World newspaper -------------------------
AS U.S. CASUALTIES RISE: PENTAGON FACED WITH NEW QUAGMIRES Resistance to Domination Flares in Middle East
By Deirdre Griswold
The Pentagon said on June 10 that 205 U.S. military personnel have died in Iraq since the war on that country officially began on March 20. Right now, the deaths are running about one a day. The government count of U.S. wounded is now 627.
These figures are low compared to the large number of Iraqi people killed and wounded. Iraqi civilian deaths alone number in the many thousands. Their homes have been bombed, children have been blown apart, whole families have died. U.S. forces have also fired on crowds of unarmed demonstrators.
On June 10, in what was described as the largest combat operation since the U.S. declared the war over, "more than 3,000 soldiers backed by fighter jets, armored vehicles and patrol boats" surrounded a 30-square- mile peninsula north of Baghdad called Thuluiya. (New York Times, June 11)
In a scene that could have been a Vietnamese village 35 years ago, or a German-occupied town in Czechoslovakia during World War II, they made a "sweep" of the area, arresting almost 400 people as possible resisters. The people there told reporters the troops handcuffed women and children, and beat to death at least one man during the roundup.
Just as during the Vietnam War, young people are being turned into brutal occupiers and killers by the Pentagon. They are put in a situation where they fear for their lives and are quick to pull the trigger. Later on, they find out that they killed a child or a pregnant woman, and many are scarred emotionally for the rest of their lives.
The Pentagon is worried about U.S. casualties, and for good reason. The troops, who have been wrenched from their families and spend their days in intense desert heat, are beginning to find out that their lives have been put on the line for a very different purpose than what was told them in orientation sessions.
The Iraqi people don't want them there. They are not welcome "liberators." The opposition to them ranges from sullen to fierce all over the country, in the Shiite south, the Kurdish north, and the Sunni central region. The Iraqis know that a military occupation cannot be called liberation. People in all walks of life say again and again to any reporter listening that they want the U.S. out, and that the troops are there to take their oil for U.S. corporations.
The other excuse for the war--besides "liberating" Iraq--was that the Saddam Hussein government had "weapons of mass destruction" that endangered the world. None have been found. That lie is now so thoroughly discredited that it has come close to bringing down the Tony Blair government in Britain and is being discussed openly, even by some in the U.S. capitalist political establishment, as the basis to impeach George W. Bush.
This falling out among those who supported the war reflects fear of the tremendous mass anger all over the world at the U.S. colonial occupation, which continues to be resisted tenaciously and courageously within Iraq.
At the same time, U.S. troops have been sent to the Philippines. There are at least 37,000 stationed in South Korea. Some are still in Afghanistan, where fighting continues and casualties continue to mount. They are fighting a revolutionary insurgency in Colombia.
GI'S TO PALESTINE?
And now there is even talk that GIs may be needed to implement Bush's alleged "road map to peace" in Israel and Palestine. Martin Indyk, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel now associated with the Brookings Institution, suggested as much after the virtual collapse of the agreement that the Bush administration had cobbled together between the new Palestinian prime minister hand-picked by Washington, Mahmoud Abbas, and the Israeli government of Ariel Sharon. (Washington Post, June 11)
As he has done so often in the past, Sharon pretended to go along with the process, but had his helicopter gunships launch a major missile attack June 10 on the Palestinian enclave of Gaza in an attempt to assassinate a leading resistance leader, Abdul Aziz Rantisi of Hamas. The aim was to provoke retaliation that would blow up the accord and any move toward recognition of a Palestinian state, no matter how limited.
At least three Palestinian groups--Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad-- have refused to go along with the road map. The attack on Hamas was sure to provoke new acts of Palestinian resistance, as happened in Jerusalem the next day, when a suicide bomber killed 16 Israelis. Israel immediately launched another missile attack that killed Hamas leader Tito Massaoud, along with five other Palestinians.
In general, Palestinian casualties have been running about three times those of Israelis, but most get little publicity.
The Bush administration acts surprised by Sharon's actions, but it should know better. The U.S. created this monster and has unleashed him on the Palestinian people many times before, all in pursuit of its geopolitical goals in the oil-rich Middle East. Washington foots the bill for Sharon's military and keeps Israel's artificial economy from falling apart.
There is no peace in any of these areas around the world where U.S. big business has been trying to run the show for decades. There can be no peace as long as the people there are deprived of their land, their sovereignty and their resources. As more and more working-class youth in uniform, so many of them people of color who get a raw deal here, are sent abroad to revive the flagging profits of the transnational corporations, the only certainty is that their desire to come home will grow along with the resistance of the occupied peoples.
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