BIGGER BOMBS FAIL TO "PACIFY" IRAQ

BIGGER BOMBS FAIL TO "PACIFY" IRAQ

By Leslie Feinberg

November 29, 2003--The "shock and awe" of Operation Iron Hammer is proving no more effective at crushing Iraqi guerrilla resistance or intimidating the civilian population into submitting to colonial-style occupation than did the opening terror bombings of the imperialist invasion.

Since the launch Nov. 12 of this massive aerial bombardment of and around Iraqi cities, in which the Pentagon has dropped some of the biggest weapons in its arsenal, U.S. occupation forces have taken some of their worst hits--militarily and politically.

The brass are scrambling to rewrite the story of how two GIs died in the northern city of Mosul on Nov. 22. Widespread media accounts reported that the soldiers' vehicle crashed after being hit with a volley of stones and gunfire, and that a crowd of local residents, including youths, then slashed the throats of the troops, pummeled their bodies and dragged them through the streets.

Grim-faced Brig. Gen. Mark T. Kimmitt, at a Nov. 23 briefing in Baghdad, confirmed the deaths but refused to discuss the details. But coverage of the killings of the two soldiers, meant to vilify the Iraqi people, triggered a collective flashback: Somalia. Mogadishu. Black Hawk down.

The reporting of the rage in Mosul, a city of some 2 million Kurds and Arabs that had allegedly welcomed the arrival of U.S. occupation forces, was too evocative of Oct. 3, 1993. Then, tens of thousands of Somali people, mostly civilians, fought off an attack by helicopter-borne U.S. Rangers and Delta Force commandos in a crowded market in Mogadishu. They jubilantly dragged the bodies of dead troops through the streets of the capital city.

It was the Pentagon's biggest battle loss since the Vietnam War: 18 elite troops dead and 73 wounded. It was a turning point that led to a hasty U.S. withdrawal from Somalia.

But the Bush administration has already made it perfectly clear that it is hunkered down and prepared to "stay the course" in Iraq. U.S. finance capital feels it has too much at stake in the Middle East--financially, militarily and politically.

The day after the soldiers were slain in Mosul, Pentagon officials announced plans to keep some 100,000 troops on the ground in Iraq through 2006.

And by that evening the Pentagon generals had changed their tune. Media reports amended the narrative of what had happened in Mosul: "Terrorists" were said to have ambushed the GIs, who were killed by gunshots to the head. Their bodies were not mutilated or dragged through the streets, said the general.

OPERATION HAMMER GALVANIZES RESISTANCE

The deaths in Mosul were part of a barrage of resistance throughout Iraq that weekend.At Baghdad airport on Nov. 22, insurgents hit a DHL cargo A300 Airbus with two missiles shortly after it took off, forcing an emergency landing. The missile strike caused Pentagon authorities to announce the suspension of civilian flights at the airport, which is also a major base for the U.S. military.

The day before, resistance fighters had hit some of the most heavily fortified and defended targets in Baghdad. Guerrillas blasted the Palestine and Sheraton hotels on the banks of the Tigris with rockets that sailed over a double row of 20-foot-high concrete blast walls installed by the Pentagon.

Rockets also exploded at the Oil Ministry, headquarters for the imperialist looting of Iraq's petroleum wealth. They had been concealed in creative "low-tech" donkey-pulled carts covered with hay.

Washington's warlords fear the mounting GI casualties will broaden and deepen domestic anti-war sentiment.

Since the invasion began, more than 9,000 U.S. troops have been killed, wounded or evacuated due to injury or illness. (Democracynow.org, Nov. 18)

The rising toll of guerrilla warfare on the occupation foot soldiers is discouraging European and Asian leaders allied to Wash ington from deploying their own troops.

They are not eager to inflame anti-war sentiments in their own populations by risking casualties.

And the UN has rebuffed Secretary of State Colin Powell's request to send its staff back to Iraq.

SALIVATING FOR SLICE OF PROFITS

Despite bitter competition, other imperialist powers don't want to see the penetration of outside capital fail in Iraq--they just want some of that capital to be their own.

Bonn has acquiesced to Washington's pressure to back debt reduction to aid Iraq's "reconstruction." Because of years of sanctions, Iraq's foreign debt to the U.S., Germany, France, Japan, Russia and the rest of the 19-country Paris Club is $40 billion. Bush cabinet members have been debating whether to press other countries to write off as much as 90 percent of this IOU.

In return, the U.S. is about to begin an accelerated bidding program for projects in Iraq like oil-field repairs and electricity generation, all necessary to create a pipeline of profits out of the country. Companies from the other imperialist countries are eligible to bid.

Guerrilla resistance has stalled out these projects and stanched the flow of profits from looted oil.

The U.S. and other imperialist powers want to paste a fig leaf of "self rule" over the naked military occupation by constructing a supposedly sovereign government that could extend its "invitation" to foreign troops.

But Washington wants to wait until next June to create a seemingly sovereign government, and its rivals--anxious to secure their slice of the profits--want it now.

A MARIONETTE LABELED 'SOVEREIGNTY'

The U.S. has appointed Rend Rahim Francke to be Iraq's diplomatic representative in Washington. Few people in Baghdad would recognize her. She was born there but spent most of her life outside the country. She is a familiar face in Washington, though, where for years she had lobbied political policy makers to topple Saddam Hussein's government.

Francke came to the U.S. in 1981 and became a citizen six years later. She worked as a banker and currency trader in London, Lebanon and Bahrain.

She said she will speak "for the nascent Iraqi government." "It is awkward," she added, "because technically Iraq is still a country under occupation." (New York Times, Nov. 23)

Technically? There are 155,000 foreign troops currently acting as a boot heel on Iraq; all but 25,000 are U.S. troops.

Some members of the current puppet Iraqi Governing Council have announced they want to stay in power after next June as a legislative body--if the U.S. authorities will let them.

The Pentagon is trying to train a national Iraqi army and police force, too, to share the casualties of occupation.

But this fledgling state is still small, poorly trained and paid, and in the crosshairs of the anti-occupation resistance. The simultaneous detonation of two huge bombs at police stations 20 miles apart north of Baghdad on Nov. 22, killing six Iraqi police, sent a powerful message that the resistance will not tolerate collaboration with imperialism.