- The US assault on Najaf is a war crime. The spectacle
of the world,s foremost imperialist power unleashing its overwhelmingly
superior military might against poorly armed opponents of foreign occupation
recalls the most notorious crimes of the twentieth century, including the
fascist bombardment of Guernica in Spain, Mussolini,s rape of Ethiopia,
and the Nazi blitzkrieg against Germany,s European neighbors in World War
II.
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- The US military, in the name of Washington,s puppet government
under Iyad Allawi, is carrying out the slaughter of supporters of cleric
Moqtada al-Sadr who have taken up arms against the attempt to turn Iraq
into a de-facto American colony.
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- The coverage by US television networks and the American
press conveys none of the true horror of what is being perpetrated by the
11th Marine Expeditionary Force and First Cavalry Division in Najaf. US
bombers, helicopter gunships, field artillery and tanks are being unleashed
against Iraqi fighters armed only with small arms and grenade launchers
that are next to useless against American armored vehicles.
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- If the US body counts from Najaf are accurate, at least
500 of the Iraqi fighters have been killed, and thousands more wounded,
in a week of bitter fighting to drive Sadr,s Mahdi Army militiamen from
their defensive positions in the cemetery to the west of the Imam Ali Mosque"one
of the most sacred of Shiite Muslim shrines.
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- Describing the conduct of the US forces, a Marine spokesman
told the Associated Press on August 11 that they had "pretty much
just been patrolling and flying helicopters all over the place, and when
we see something bad, we blow it up.
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- No estimate is being given by the US attackers of civilian
casualties, but given the massive firepower being thrown against urban
centers"including the Shiite slum of Sadr City in Baghdad and other
southern Iraqi cities besides Najaf"they must number in the thousands.
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- Earlier this week, the US military told tens of thousands
of Najaf residents their homes were a "military zone and ordered them
to evacuate. Thousands chose to defy the invaders, or were prevented from
leaving by the fighting raging all around them.
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- Electricity, water and medical services have ceased to
function in the city of 600,000. Thousands of shrines and graves in the
revered cemetery have been destroyed or damaged. Much of the historic old
city, dating back 1,300 years, which surrounds the mosque has been reduced
to rubble.
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- The US media has failed to take note of the bitter irony
in the American military laying waste to the religious and cultural center
of Iraq,s Shiite population. The "no-fly zone enforced by the US over
southern Iraq from 1991 until last year,s invasion was justified as a measure
to protect the Shiite population from repression by Saddam Hussein,s Baathist
regime. The US invasion was propagated as an act of "liberation of
the oppressed Shiites.
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- Now the American "liberators are unleashing the
most savage repression the Shiites have suffered since 1991. The Shiite
masses have responded with large demonstrations against the slaughter in
Najaf in cities such as Baghdad, Basra, Nasiriya and other predominantly
Shiite cities in Iraq. Demonstrations have also been held in other Middle
Eastern countries.
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- Following a US push into the city center over the past
24 hours, hundreds of Sadr,s militiamen, and possibly Sadr himself, are
making a last stand inside the compound of the Imam Ali Mosque. They are
surrounded by tanks and thousands of American troops, as well as a largely
symbolic presence of Iraqi troops under the nominal command of the US-installed
interim government. The US forces are demanding the surrender of Sadr,s
militia and threatening to storm the complex or starve out the defenders.
Isolated pockets of the Mahdi Army are believed to be trapped inside the
cemetery and buildings in the old city.
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- The looming massacre underscores an irrefutable political
fact: the entire charade of installing a "sovereign interim government
was a smokescreen behind which Washington prepared a bloodbath against
the Iraqi resistance. For all the cynical claims in the US media that the
puppet regime under Prime Minister Allawi represented a "transition
to democracy, its real function all along was to provide an indigenous
face for a homicidal onslaught that Washington had wanted to carry out
last spring, but felt obliged to delay for political reasons.
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- The physical destruction of the Shiite movement led by
Sadr was first ordered by the Bush administration in March, when the US
authority in Iraq ordered the arrest of Sadr himself and other leaders
of the Mahdi Army. At the same time, the White House ordered an assault
on the city of Fallujah, the center of the Sunni-based insurgency against
the occupation.
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- The repression, however, provoked an uprising that rapidly
engulfed most of Iraq. The official US lie that resistance to the occupation
was limited to supporters of the former Baathist regime was exposed by
the entry into struggle of tens of thousands of Iraqi Shiite and Sunni
youth from the working class and most oppressed areas of the country.
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- In the United States, the scenes of indiscriminate bombing
of Iraqi cities, soaring American casualties, and the revelations of torture
at Abu Ghraib prison led to a groundswell of antiwar sentiment. In polls
conducted in the US in late April, 58 percent said the war "was not
worth the loss of American life, and 50 percent supported the withdrawal
of all US troops from Iraq "as soon as possible.
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- The Bush administration responded to the growing political
and military crisis by ordering US forces in Iraq to make a series of tactical
retreats. Truces were struck, first with the Sunni insurgents in Fallujah,
and then with the Mahdi Army in Najaf, Karbala and the Sadr City suburb
of Baghdad.
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- The aim of the truces was always to give US imperialism
the time to prepare the political and military conditions for the bloodbath
that has now begun. The Bush administration pushed ahead with the installation
of a "sovereign interim government, with the sanction of the United
Nations, in order to provide a fig leaf of Iraqi support for mass US repression.
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- The White House ensured that Allawi, who had been on
the payroll of the CIA for a decade, was named as prime minister. Allawi,s
qualifications were his total subservience to American imperialism and
his well-known penchant for brutality. He has not hesitated to place his
imprimatur on the renewed US offensive against the Iraqi resistance.
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- To spearhead the offensive, 7,000 extra Marine assault
troops were rushed to Iraq by mid-July, taking up positions outside Fallujah
and Najaf. These military preparations were carried out in conjunction
with crucial political preparations within the US. In this, the American
media and, even more critically, the Democratic Party, played an indispensable
role.
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- The corporate conglomerates that control the American
media are in full agreement with the real war aims behind the invasion:
the installation of a puppet government to sanction permanent US military
bases in Iraq and the takeover of the country,s oil resources by US corporate
interests.
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- From right-wing publications to so-called liberal publications
such as the New York Times and Washington Post, the press has worked to
suppress the antiwar views of the majority of the American population and
censor any questioning of the legitimacy of the war.
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- But the greatest service to the war criminals responsible
for the events now unfolding was provided by the Democratic Party and its
presidential candidate, John Kerry. It is no accident that the current
offensive comes in the wake of the Democratic National Convention, which
was a non-stop spectacle of militarism and chauvinism. The Democratic Party
hierarchy and Kerry have made every effort to marginalize antiwar sentiment.
Opposition to the Iraq invasion has been excluded from the official discussion
in the lead-up to the November presidential election.
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- Kerry himself has declared that any administration he
heads will keep US troops in Iraq until "stability is established"a
euphemism for the total suppression of the Iraqi resistance.
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- The willingness of the American ruling class to employ
the most savage and brutal methods to achieve its imperialist aims cannot
be underestimated. More than three million Vietnamese died before US imperialism
finally accepted defeat. Washington and Wall Street are more than prepared
to inflict similar carnage in Iraq.
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- The authors of the Iraq invasion are deluding themselves,
however, if they believe that the mass murder being committed in Najaf
will consolidate the country as a US colony. It has already intensified
the resistance to the US-led occupation forces and further inflamed the
popular hostility toward Allawi,s regime.
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- Fearing the retribution of the masses, the Najaf province
deputy governor and 16 of the 30 members of the US-vetted Najaf provincial
council have resigned in protest. The US military has been forced to deploy
thousands of troops on the fringes of Sadr City in Baghdad to prepare for
major battles with the thousands of Iraqis who have taken up arms among
the suburb,s two million residents. Fighting is taking place in Kut, Nasiriya
and other Shiite cities.
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- The British forces occupying southern Iraq are confronting
the prospect of a mass uprising in the predominantly Shiite southern cities
of Basra and Amara. The deputy governor of Basra province, Hajj Salam Awdeh
al-Maliky, called Tuesday for the shutdown of oil exports from the city,s
port "in response to the crimes committed against Iraqis by an illegal
and unelected government, and occupation forces who claimed they came to
liberate Iraq, but it turned out have come to kill Iraqis.
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- Workers in the southern Iraqi oil fields have walked
out on strike, shutting down operations.
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- An estimated 1,000 British-recruited police and paramilitary
troops in Basra have declared their allegiance to Maliky and hailed his
threats to join forces with Sadr.
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- The main Sunni Muslim religious organization, the Association
of Muslim Scholars, has issued a fatwa, or instruction, prohibiting all
Sunnis in the interim government,s military and police forces from assisting
the US military in the attack on Sadr,s movement. Fighting is once again
flaring in the Fallujah area.
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- Across the Middle East and beyond, the US occupation
of Iraq is inflaming the masses and intensifying their outrage over the
venality and impotency of their own bourgeois governments. The popular
sentiment in Iran"the most populous Shiite Muslim nation"for
an open struggle against the US is such that the country,s theocracy has
been compelled to issue threats of intervention. A question mark hovers
over the survival of some of the key regimes upon which US imperialist
interests in the region depend: in particular, those of Hosni Mubarak in
Egypt, the Hashemite monarchy in Jordan, the Saudi royal family, and the
Pakistani military dictatorship of Pervez Musharraf.
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- Above all, US imperialism is on a collision course with
the American working class. While the criminality of the occupation of
Iraq may be excluded from official discourse, it is sowing increasing discontent
and revulsion among tens of millions of Americans.
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- Against the attempts of the Democrats and the media to
drown out the mass opposition to the crimes being committed in the name
of the American people, the demand must be raised for the immediate withdrawal
of all US and allied forces, the payment of reparations for the immense
suffering inflicted on the Iraqi people, and the prosecution of the organizers,
planners and propagators of the invasion of Iraq for war crimes.
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