Saddam Hussein’s headstone says "This is the gravesite of the martyr Saddam Hussein, commander-in-chief of the armed forces and president of the Iraqi Republic. May God have mercy on him. He was born in 1937 and was martyred in 2006. The cavalier descended his horse. Rest in peace O hero."
US Imperialism has done what many thought was impossible – transformed Saddam Hussein from a hated tyrant into a martyr for millions throughout Iraq and across the Arab world. But this shouldn’t be a surprise considering that it is almost a "law" now governing the US occupation of Iraq – that everything they try to achieve turns into its opposite.
Since their defeat in the November elections, the Republican Party and the neo-cons around Bush have been engaged in an intense period of "reflection" on what to do next in Iraq and how to rebuild their support in the US.
The Republicans’ electoral defeat was largely based on the growing opposition to the war and occupation of Iraq. Many voted for the Democrats believing that it might lead (at some point) to the withdrawal of US troops. Yet Bush and the neo-cons have ignored the report of James Baker’s Iraq Study Group and many others that advised them to instigate a withdrawal strategy, and to involve Syria and Iran in trying to stop the fragmentation of Iraq.
Instead Bush and his regime are going on the offensive militarily in Iraq and politically in the US with the message that what is needed is an escalation of the war and talk of withdrawal is out of the question. In pursuit of his victory at any cost strategy, Bush has sent an extra 21,500 troops to Iraq, bringing their occupation force up to 155,000. Bush is deploying 17,500 of these new troops to Baghdad in an attempt to clamp down on the sectarian violence that has cost tens of thousands of lives. There is also speculation that the US may be about to launch a new offensive against the Mehdi Army, the militia controlled by the Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
A USA Today poll showed that 61% of Americans are against increasing the number of troops in Iraq and an ABC-Washington Post survey said that only 17% favoured an increase. The barbaric lynching of Saddam Hussein obscured the news that the 111 US soldiers killed in Iraq in December brought the total number of US soldiers killed to 3,000. On top of this, 47,000 have sustained serious injury and Bush and the new military and political leaders he has appointed to Iraq are preparing for more.
New offensive
Their new military offensive will result in a dramatic increase in the numbers of US troops killed and injured. In a report, Choosing Victory: A Plan for Success in Iraq, Frederick Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute (a right-wing think tank that played an important role in persuading the Bush government to invade Iraq) said, "a short-term increase in casualties is not a sign of failure". Senator John McCain, a contender for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008 spoke at an American Enterprise Institute forum in favour of the plan stating: "The surge must be substantial and it must be sustained…I want to be clear and I mean this with all sincerity, this strategy will mean more casualties and extra hardships for our brave fighting men and women and the violence may get worse before it gets better. We have to prepare for this."
This is a high-risk strategy for US Imperialism. The opposition to the war in Iraq is now so widespread that according to a poll carried out by the Military Times only 35% of US soldiers approve of Bush’s handling of the war and only 41% say that the US should have invaded Iraq, which is a drop from 65% in 2003. The resulting deaths and casualties for the US forces from a new military offensive will increase and intensify the opposition to the war in the US. However its biggest impact will be felt in Iraq.
The Lancet report of June 2006 estimated that 655,000 Iraqis had died as a result of the war in Iraq. In the last six months, even the conservative estimates of the UN put the death toll at 4,000 per month. Most likely the number of Iraqis killed has surpassed 700,000! To this truly horrific statistic can be added the two million Iraqis who have fled the country and the 1.7 million internal refugees. This is the largest long-term population movement in the Middle East since the Palestinians were driven from their lands in 1948 according to the UN refugee agency. Appealing for $60 million to help Iraq’s refugees the UNHCR said: "There are increasing problems of women forced to resort to prostitution, as well as growing child labour problems." So great is the misery of the Iraqi people that 90% believe that life was better under Saddam Hussein!
Saddam's execution
The execution of Saddam Hussein, carried out on a Shia holy day, and the chilling video showing how he was taunted by supporters of Muqtada al-Sadr in the seconds leading up to his hanging has intensified the sectarian division and conflict between Iraq’s Sunnis and Shias. According to The Times (1 January 2007) the Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki referred the decision on when Saddam Hussein should be executed to the marjaiyah, the council of Shia ayatollahs in the Shiite holy city of Najaf. On the same day, The New York Times said it would be difficult for the US to dissociate itself from the execution since the hanging took place at a US controlled military facility and Saddam Hussein had remained in US custody prior to the hanging. The sectarian nature of Saddam’s execution, and how it has enraged Iraq’s Sunni population will be added to by the news that the Shia executioners presented Muqtada al-Sadr with the noose they used for the hanging.
The rushed and illegal execution of Saddam Hussein (by law it should have been first approved by the three leaders of the Iraqi government, one each from the Shia, Sunni and Kurdish coalitions that make up the government), was not just an ill thought out act of sectarian revenge. Nouri Maliki’s government, in collaboration with its US overlords, wanted Saddam Hussein dead as quickly as possible before evidence was produced at his second trial (for the mass murder of Kurds) of the huge financial and military support given to him by the US over a period of ten years. "We’ve shut him up. The moment Saddam’s hooded executioner pulled the lever of the trapdoor in Baghdad yesterday morning, Washington’s secrets were safe. The shameless, outrageous, covert military support which the United States – and Britain – gave to Saddam for more than a decade remains the one terrible story which our presidents and prime ministers do not want the world to remember. And now Saddam, who knew the full extent of that Western support – given to him while he was perpetrating some of the worst atrocities since the Second world War – is dead", Robert Fisk, The Independent, 31 December 2006.
Clampdown
The thousands of extra US soldiers will be unable to quell the sectarian bloodbath that their political masters in Washington have unleashed in Iraq. The clampdown promised by Bush in Baghdad and the Sunni province of Anbar will swell the ranks of the Sunni resistance. If the speculation is correct and Bush orders an offensive against al-Sadr’s Mehdi Army, then this could be the biggest mistake that the US have made since its decision to invade. Muqtada al-Sadr (a reactionary Shia fundamentalist cleric) has a massive following amongst the Shia population. His main stronghold is in Sadr city, a two million strong Shia district of Baghdad from which the Mehdi Army has been engaged in a campaign of sectarian slaughter and "ethnic cleansing". It is claimed that Muqtada’s militia have been responsible for the torture and murder of tens of thousands of Sunnis.
If the US army move against Muqtada’s forces in Baghdad, it could drive thousands of Shia into active military opposition to the US occupation, thus widing the "resistance" movement beyond its current Sunni base. "Somehow many senior US officials have convinced themselves that it is Mr Sadr, revered by millions of Shia, who is the obstacle to a moderate Iraqi government. In fact his legitimacy in the eyes of ordinary Shia Iraqis, the great majority of the population, is far greater than the ‘moderate’ politicians whom the US has in its pocket…An attack on the Shia militia men of the Mehdi Army could finally lead to the collapse of Iraq into total anarchy", Patrick Cockburn, The Independent.
The US military’s new offensive will fail in all of its objectives. The sectarian conflict that blights Iraq will deepen and, in the absence of a working class alternative, will drive Iraq closer to all out civil war and the disintegration of the country.
The Socialist Party opposed Saddam Hussein and his brutal dictatorship. However we also opposed the US and British war explaining that it would not lead to democracy for the Iraqi people, but instead to a ruthless occupation by US Imperialism determined to control Iraq’s oil reserves at a massive human and financial cost to the Iraqi people. The US government and Iraq’s sectarian political elites are incapable of solving the crisis in Iraq. Any solution based on capitalism can only result in civil war, and the division of Iraq into three regions that will be ruled by new ruthless dictatorships determined to gain control of Iraq’s massive oil wealth for their own enrichment.
The only way out of this nightmare for the Iraqi people is on the basis of unity the unity of Iraq’s Shia, Sunni and Kurdish workers and rural poor, in a democratically controlled mass resistance movement to the occupation. Such a movement should be built around the goal of creating a socialist federation of Iraq in which all that country’s natural and human resources will be utilised for the benefit of the majority in a society where the rights of all will be protected.
