The Occupation Of Iraq Is Not A Technical Issue

Many “Iraqi elites” these days have started to view the occupation as if it were an everlasting, inevitable fate, impossible for the Iraqis to escape without the blessing of the Americans themselves. They have similarly started viewing the troubles and tribulations of the occupation as, in essence, technical crises that need some corrections and modifications on the military, political, economic, and financial fronts. Many of our elites have come to view the occupier as sincere in his desire and actions to establish a democratic Iraqi state with an impartial elected government headed by free, patriotic politicians. Many of the elites have come not to see in the existing occupation the appropriation of a free nation, the destruction of a country, and the subjugation of its people. Indeed the invasion and occupation of Iraq, its destruction, and the subjugation of its people is considered, by the United States of America, a technical matter which can be summarized as controlling the oil reserves of Iraq and the Middle East in order to exert its influence in dominating the world. And in order to achieve that, America has employed military means and deployed force outside its historical bounds, the rules of ethics, and the legitimacy of standard, internationally-recognized political, economic, and humanitarian principles. Before and after the invasion, in a technical manner, the American administration set up a web of military, economic, political, and financial plans and programs to control Iraq and completely annex it. Among the main components of this network: its exploitation of the oil resources and undermining of the standing ruling groups by “daylight robbers” appointed to dismantle the political, economic, social, and humanitarian systems which the Iraqis had established throughout their contemporary history. The American schemes in Iraq have produced networks of Israeli intelligence, mercenary companies, “political contractors”, warlords, militias, and consultants, who have designed, implemented, and imposed an abominable sectarian, ethnically-fragmented constitution and oppressive, demeaning laws (the laws of Bremer, the oil law, the law for the election of provincial councils, the long-term agreement). Similarly America has furnished executive directors, contractors, government contracts, negotiators, and businessmen for their sectarian, factional, and personal economic and financial schemes, a far cry from dealing with the disasters of destruction, death, poverty, hunger, unemployment, destitution, and migration created by the organizations of the occupier and its affiliates. The occupier created systems to protect American influence typified by multinational companies, global banks, the defense and security apparatus, international agencies, and the small elites who purchased and prepared them.

Indeed, to the American administration, the occupation of Iraq is a technical project which requires the coordination and cooperation of American working groups and opponents of mercenaries and dissidents living in London (the American General Zinni called it the Bay of Goats) with Central Intelligence circles, the Pentagon, the US State Department, Israeli Mossad, and some failing states. The occupation of Iraq begat immediate and prospective benefits for the imperial forces— American capitalism in the fields of strategic defense, security, oil, and infrastructure necessary to spread the American hegemony. In Iraq the occupation begat a network of contract politicians, agents, and spies who the Americans don’t respect and who don’t have any value to speak of outside the circle of their political and spying operations. They contribute to the perpetuation of the occupation and the momentum of the programs, lies, and fabrications which the American administration needs to portray the Iraqi quagmire in which it fell as a victory, and that the current and mounting future costs of the war will be covered by controlling Iraqi oil and establishing American companies to obtain military, oil, and economic contracts through “direct selection” and not on the basis of international competition to choose the best bid. We can imagine the extent of the Iraqi financial resources which the American administration is looking to seize (in order to cover the costs of its war) when we realize that the direct cost of military operations in Iraq has surpassed the Vietnam War, which lasted 12 years. It has cost twice that of the Korean War, without even calculating the direct and indirect human and social cost.

The American administration is trying, through its institutions and organizations and tokens of government in Iraq to convince the world, and especially the Iraqis, that the lack of stability, security, and prosperity in Iraq were caused only by the internal struggle between parties who are not satisfied with agreement, harmony, and coexistence, and that it is possible to contain that struggle by completing some “corrective measures” on the military, security, political, and economic fronts. For on the military side, the American administration believes that the desired correction can be achieved by appointing a limited number of team leaders from the former Iraqi army as technical advisors who do not have any real function or power to restructure and rebuild a strong national army to defend Iraq and its people against any invasion, occupation, or violation, or to put down the foreign influence sweeping through the highest national interests. The occupier is trying to convince the absent minds that these formalities can benefit the military and security forces which the occupier made as a heterogeneous mix of forces and ethnic and sectarian militias lacking national loyalty and awareness and professional military discipline. The occupier introduced these forces as a shield to repel the anger of the Iraqi national popular resistance. The occupier created the “Awakening” movement to contain and marginalize the role of the resistance under the pretext that the Sunni sect protect it!?

On the security front, the American administration is following with bated breath the number of killed and wounded troops from the theatre of operations for reasons related to the coming presidential elections, while at the same time leaving private mercenary companies (Blackwater), its Central Intelligence apparatus, organizations of the Pentagon, Mossad, and the Kurdish-led Peshmerga to divvy up the roles and functions of killing, imprisoning, and terrorizing Iraqi civilians in order to dismantle the country and carve it into miserable states. All that is happening without any Iraqi or international legal accountability.

On the economic front, the American administration and its contractors are fighting to impose their “neo-liberal” laws designed and aimed at exploiting Iraq’s oil resources and subjecting its entire economy to control and fleecing by giant corporations. America is using the withholding of our oil revenues and the freezing of humanitarian programs as leverage to starve the people and render them subservient and accepting of these exploitive and unfair, capitalistic, colonial— imperial— laws and programs.

It is lamentable that all that injustice is gaining ground in Iraq and the Arab world neither sees nor hears nor speaks it. But the biggest lament is that the position of some of the “elites” toward such a huge number of humanitarian disasters, is that we Iraqis are obligated to accept it and deal with it within the limits laid down by the occupation. This is while its laws, programs and measures are imposed on us. It is the duty of the elites to work hard “for the sake of the homeland” in order to achieve the adjustment, correction and agreement that is required by the American administration.

Hey people, Iraq is an occupied country… one which the occupier invaded, enslaved, colonized, destroyed, killed, displaced, widowed, abandoned, divided, tore apart, raped, buried, condemned, imprisoned, pawned, despised, degraded, humiliated, and plundered. And after all that, it wants us to sign a truce, be accepting, work hard, obey, sanction, feel pride, laugh, and rejoice.

No, it will not be… we will fight and pray and scream and slap and mourn and write and sing. We will drive the oppressors of the Iraqi land out by coming together to crush the fortress of the heretical tyrants.