�I would put on record my
conviction that Independence in fact would be a farce, if the British Troops
are in India even for peace and order within or danger from without.� --
Mohandas Gandhi on occupation
Taking notice of the escalating deaths and military failure of the
United States to subdue the Iraqi armed resistance after 32 months of a
Hitlerian-like occupation, during which the Bush regime used every weapon
imaginable except a nuclear bomb, imperialists across Europe and the United
States began circulating a buzzword for a fictitious withdrawal from Iraq
called, �exit strategy."
What is an exit strategy in the general sense? Is it a plan to withdraw
forces while still under fire? Is it just a plan to just exit from an occupied
place or country? If the United States wants to exit Iraq, why does it need a
strategy? Would not a workable plan would be sufficient? Alternatively, what if
the United States instead of seeking an �exit strategy� is actually is
pondering a staying strategy?
So far, no one in the imperialist camp would be comfortable enough to
answer these questions, and the debate on that nebulous �exit strategy"
rests on a very solid colonialist assumption by the United States. This
assumption posits that an American exit strategy means that �after completing
the mission and the creation of so-called Iraqi democratic institutions, the
U.S. would remain in Iraq to guarantee the nascent fragile Iraqi democracy.�
Effectively though, seeing that the United States of Kissinger,
Halliburton, Bechtel, and war-making (�defense�) contractors is not
enthusiastic or in a hurry to define in concrete terms what an �exit strategy�
is, countless essayists of imperialism jumped to rescue the empire from a
defeat that is shaping up faster than the occupation circles are able to cope
with.
While it is understandable that those essayists may have a motive to
sustain their connections to the Israeli-American project in Iraq, it is not
clear as why some progressive writers compete with the imperialist camp on who
could better �rescue the United States by offering confused theorization on
matters they did not analyze enough to fully understand. Among these writers,
who are joining in the frenzy of rescue, is Manuel Garcia Jr., a physicist,
writer, and a poet.
In the closing paragraph of an incoherent article, Iraq:
To End The Occupation, End The Civil War, Manuel Garcia Jr. writes,
�My aim in making these suggestions is purely selfish. I want the war to end as
quickly as possible, I want Americans home, and I want the killing to end.�
Of course, I am not singling out Garcia -- many other progressive
writers tend to mix well thought writing projects with disinformation they take
for granted as factual or information turned up by searches, but without
providing a clue as how this is so, and who came up with it. In doing so, they
annul the good part with the bad one. The result is a work that only adds
confusion to readers who want to know the facts as presented by the alternative
media.
This article, therefore, examines this type of writing by studying the
shortcomings and erroneous extrapolation of facts as made by a progressive
writer. To put it bluntly, the way Garcia elaborated his views on a subject of
such enormous importance requires direct dialectical intervention.
For instance, aside from sincere wishful thinking, Garcia�s exhortation
to end the neocon or hyper-imperialist occupation of Iraq with such a nebulous
formula is one among the most disturbing trends that now pervades some
progressive writers with a penchant for prolific writing but without substance,
critical reflection, or research required to address the occupation of Iraq in
an international context.
Not only did the article exhibit a glaring ignorance of Iraqi
historical, societal, national, cultural, and religious realities before and
after the occupation, but also an unexpected disregard for the econo-military
and ideological nature of the imperialist transformation of Iraq and their
consequence internationally. Thus, it was evident that the absence of specific
knowledge on the operative mechanisms of both colonialism and imperialism had
deleted, unavoidably, any possible validity that the article could otherwise
achieve.
If Garcia�s purpose for writing such an article is to see an end to the
American occupation of Iraq, a one sentence article, such as �end the
occupation now," would certainly suffice. But to expand on a slogan and
venture into the uncharted territory of political elaboration without adequate
knowledge on the subject is unmitigated intellectual disaster for Garcia or, as
a matter of course, for any other writer. Specifically to propose a solution
that ends the occupation by ending a civil war that does not exit is the
apogee of political naivet�.
Moreover, it is unsettling to see Garcia develop his
principal argument by building on irreparably flawed analyses that emanate
directly from the vocabulary of U.S. imperialism. Even more unsettling than the
previous statement is Garcia�s decision to rely on sources already tainted by
propaganda or disinformation to validate his erratic conclusion. In a sense,
Garcia, confusing good intentions as viable analysis, compounded his problem as
a political writer by presenting a simplistic solution to a complex problem of
which he did not explore the dimensions and implications in multiple contexts.
But to name his inconsistent and mangled theorizations as an �Iraq exit
strategy� is beyond comprehension.
The fact remains that addressing an Iraq exit strategy is a multipart
argument that requires stringent analysis and above all competent knowledge of
various interrelated factors. These include the nature of U.S. imperialism
consequent to 9/11, the role of Zionism in the war against Arab and Muslim
countries, the role of major nuclear powers in keeping the post-Iraq�s invasion
world realities unchanged, and the role that former communist and Latin
American countries play in supplying manpower to the occupation regime. Last,
but not lastly, devising an American exit strategy from Iraq without studying
the irreversible decay of the official Arab sub-system within the international
system is an exercise in futility.
From the viewpoint of semantics, talking about the prospect
of an American exit strategy from Iraq but without ending the occupation in
all of its manifestations means one thing only: providing logistical support on
ways and means by which the United States can extricate itself from Iraq while
maintaining the occupation in different forms. In other words, it appears that
the discussion on a U.S. exit strategy is mostly centered on how to help the
United States extricate itself from possible military defeat while enjoying the
fruit of occupation.
However, considering the imperialist ambitions of the Bush
regime, we need not be aiding the United States escape defeat, but actually to
help defeating it in Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria,
Palestine, Iran, Kosovo, Yugoslavia, Venezuela, Cuba, and elsewhere, otherwise,
the tumor of neocon colonialism will metastasize and destroy all countries of
the world, one by one. Based on this view, the only possible exit strategy for
the U.S. in Iraq is to withdraw from Iraq immediately, consign it to Iraqis not
tainted by support for the occupation, and delete all the decrees imposed in 32
months of occupation.
In the end, regurgitating imperialist cliches and falsehood
in a form assumed to be progressive opposition to the war essentially means two
things: (1) intellectual disservice to the cause of Iraq�s liberation, and (2)
unintended alliance with the Bush regime and its economic-ideological agenda.
The following is a constructive criticism of Garcia�s article.
Garcia�s sloganeering title, �to end the occupation, end the
civil war� makes no sense. First, the American invasion caused that apparent
Iraqi civil strife. Second, what civil war is he alluding to, and whom is he
calling on to end the occupation? Third, his statement of civil war in Iraq is
baseless -- there is no is no civil war in Iraq. This is propaganda promoted by
U.S. Zionism (Bernard Lewis, for example) to partition Iraq into three states,
so the U.S. and Israel can completely control it via a system of alliances with
Iraqi factions indebted to the U.S. for putting them in power.
What does exit in Iraq is violence in thee forms: (1)
violence by the occupation force to subdue Iraq into submission by military
means; (2) violence by mercenary and security forces brought in by the
occupation regime; and (3) �violence� by the Iraqi resistance against the
occupation that no reasonable person should call violence. Self-defense and a
war of liberation against fascist invaders is not violence; it is an
inalienable right inherent in human nature. My conviction on the right to
resist an occupation of societies by other societies is such that, if the
�creator� would come down to earth as an invader, humans would fight �him,"
not as a creator or God but as an invader.
The question that one may ask then is, �what about the daily
violence that TV and the print media keep flooding us with, what about all
those suicide bombers, and all these flying body parts, etc . . . The answer is
that neither Arab Shiite nor Arab Sunnis executed them -- period. If none of
these groups committed these macabre daily deaths then who did commit them?
To understand this, one need look no farther than the
mercenary force tailored by former American proconsul John Negroponte around
his Salvadoran experience and to the Israeli intelligence service. Anyone who
can have access to alternative and reliable Arabic or not-Arabic websites
(examples: Iraqwar.ru, al-Quds Alarabi, al-Basrah.net, Bellaciao, etc.) can
attest to this statement. All the talk about Arab Shiite Muslim violence
against Arab Sunni Muslim or vice versa originates from Washington think tanks
and media to maximize the spurious rationale that U.S. forces could not leave
Iraq for �fear� of a civil war.
There is no denial,
however, that the Shiite clergy is itching to rule Iraq under the wings of the
occupation. Also, there is no denial that personal violence such as robberies
and intimidations have increased a million-fold since the United States turned
Iraq into a lawless country. But one must also remember that the immediate aim
of the United Sates since the fall of Baghdad was to promote a false sense of
Shiite power. This is because the U.S. knew that it should not gain the enmity
of the Shiite relative majority in Iraq; that is why it proceeded immediately
to harass the Sunnis under the assumption that because Saddam is Sunni, the
Shiites would be happy to see the U.S. castigate the Sunni Arabs.
Civil war as a concept does not apply to Iraq, not even
minimally. All what one hears in the American media is that a �suicide bomber�
exploded in a Shiite neighborhood killing such and such number of people. The
fact is that Iraqi writers writing on Iraqi websites, such as Kitabat and
Iraq4all, report solid evidence on how the U.S. forces detain some citizens,
drug them, and drive to a predestined location, and then detonate the car by
remote control. And . . . Voila, here we have, ecce homo, al-Zarqawi associate, al-Qaeda terrorist, Islamist
terrorist, suicide bomber, al-Zarqawi, and so on. But who is the foreign
journalist who verified U.S. claims of �suicide bombers," checked their
identity, and how did they get to the sites of explosions?
Garcia, mired in political confusion, calls the Iraqi
resistance a �Sunni insurgency.� This is Washington�s terminology to downsize
and vilify the uprising and delimit it to Arab Muslim Sunnis. To inform the
reader, the Iraqi resistance includes Arabs (Sunni and Shiite), Kurds,
Turcomanis, and Christians. Therefore, under the right to resist is an Iraqi
resistance that includes a wide spectrum forming the Iraqi society as a whole,
and that is regardless of preconceived ideas and indoctrination that Powell,
Rice, and Wolfowitz want us to believe.
Lind as much as Garcia plays into the hands of Washington as
when Lind proposes and Garcia concurs: �secret negotiations would be an end to
attacks by the insurgency and the liquidation of al Qaeda in Iraq by insurgent
forces.� It appears that both Lind and Garcia are living outside the solar
system.
First, they take for granted that there is such a thing as
al-Qaeda in Iraq. Second, because of this unsubstantiated disposition, they
seem to view the U.S. war on Iraq, as a war between the United States and al-Qaeda.
A question: Since al-Qaeda had its headquarters in Afghanistan but not in Iraq,
why then do we not hear that Washington is fighting al-Qaeda in that country?
Did al-Qaeda evaporate because the U.S. bombed Afghanistan? Moreover, since the
U.S. is occupying a Muslim country called Afghanistan, why then do these
�international al-Qaedaists� not flock to that country to fight the U.S. there?
Specifically, is it not odd that they fight the U.S. only in Iraq?
When Garcia theorizes on
the �insurgency," he takes his clue from Lind, who, in turn, takes his
clue from the Christian Science Monitor (CSM). He wrote, �To complement Lind's
proposal, let us speculate on how insurgency politics might speed a U.S.
decision to leave Iraq.� In doing that, Garcia fell completely inside the trap
of imperialist linguistics.
To advance his own
speculation, Garcia then proceeded to expose what amounts to the jest of an
American distortion of the Arab, Iraqi, and Islamic realities, incorporating a
quote from Lind via the CSM, as in the sentence, �The Iraqi Sunni Insurgency
has a political front, a coalition of political parties that is �Islamist,
vehemently anti-American, opposed to foreign troops, and discreetly
pro-insurgency.��
First, as I mentioned earlier, Sunni Insurgency is an
oxymoron without any substantive validation. Categorically, in Iraq, we do not
have a Sunni insurgency but an IRAQI UPRISING against the occupiers.
As for the �vehement anti-American� stuff, this is an
imperialist hubris and a blatant tergiversation from real issues. How is it
that an outside force can invade, destroy, loot, occupy, steal the oil, and
kill over a hundred thousand Iraqi civilians (after killing a million Iraqi children
in the decade preceding 9/11) and be called a liberation force instead of
anti-Iraqi?
It is redundant to state that the Iraqis are against the
American occupation, but are decidedly not anti-American. Yet, since the United
States attacked Iraq in the name of the American people, then, technically speaking, fighting against
the American occupation of Iraq implies fighting against the American people
who authorized the war through their Congress, and then allowed the war party
to stay in power.
For instance, did the Vietnamese fight the Americans because
of anti-Americanism or because America was occupying a part of their country
under the pretext of fighting communism? To reinforce this paradigm, did the
South wage war against the North during the Civil War because of anti-Yankism
or because of different issues? As for opposition to foreign troops, this is
such an absurd statement: why should anyone accept a foreign military
occupation of his home and land?
As far as it concern Lind's statement that Garcia found
attractive, �Lind believes �it is closely tied to the Baathist elements of the
insurgency, which are both a large part of the resistance and strongly opposed
to al Qaeda.�" Well, of course, there are Baathists fighting against the
occupation: are not Iraqis of any political persuasion entitled to fight the
occupiers of their country?
With the following statement, Garcia stumbled and fell down.
He identified five forces vying for power in Iraq; but among them, he included
the occupation force! I have no idea that the occupation force could be an
indigenous force so that Garcia could include it in his count. In theory, if
the occupation force were to run for political office in Iraq and wins, then I
can exclaim the day after, �Halleluiah and hurrahs . . . The occupation force
won the election!�
In the trail of that faulty argument, Garcia added another
argument with two halves: one is true, and the other is false, as when he
wrote, �The invaders in Iraq are the Anglo-American forces seeking to control
Iraqi oil, and the al Qaeda forces that seek to exploit the war to ignite an
international revolution of their own vision.�
The preceding is sheer political illiteracy. Garcia relied
on the Bush regime to supply us with �his historical� version that the war and
occupation of Iraq is an extension of the fight between imperialists wanting to
control oil and al-Qaeda seeking international revolution. The only two leaders who made statements on al-Qaeda in such an ideological
terminology are George Bush and Ariel Sharon.
Of course, I agree with Garcia on oil; but that is only one element.
Aside from the still unresolved case of 9/11 that the U.S. attributed to
al-Qaeda, which the U.S. itself created, trained, and financed to fight the
Soviets in Afghanistan, the declared political manifesto of that
ultra-conservative Islamist organization is to expel U.S. imperialism from
Saudi Arabia. Based on a natural right to be free from occupation, why should
any one oppose this right? If Islamists fought with American support and Saudi
money to expel the Soviets from Afghanistan, why should they not fight to expel
the Americans from Saudi Arabia or other Arab states? Do religious beliefs
matter when one is fighting to liberate his historical soil from foreign
invaders? Accepting the opposite is an invitation to accept colonialism.
Of course, there is a declared war between the United States
and al-Qaeda (a mainly Saudi Arabian organization) about the presence of
American occupying troops in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States. Involving
al-Qaeda in the war of liberation of the Iraqi people against the American
occupiers, however, is a ludicrous claim invented by Washington, amplified by
its media, and swallowed by many people without verification or research.
From that statement forward, Garcia�s analyses lost all
logical and analytical threads and began rolling downhill thus losing any
intelligible political sense. For instance, he proposed a solution for Iraq
based not only on palpable ignorance of Iraq but also on a fatal incapacity to
remedy a political thought in total disarray.
- Proposal
1: �Turf," the boundaries between three regions of military control:
Kurd, Shia and Sunni.�
Comment: does this not imply a partition of Iraq? Did the
U.S. invade Iraq to divide it into enclaves or to search for WMD? Or is that a
strategy to divide-and-conquer? Historically, aside from the mountainous
Kurdish region, the rest of Iraq has been homogenous for the past 7,000 years,
so why does Garcia want to separate according to the scheme of Leslie Gelb and
Bernard Lewis? Does he think that the south of Iraq is exclusively Shiite? Does
not he know that in many instances a family, clan or tribe can include Shiite
and Sunnis? Why should he separate them just because Washington and Tel Aviv
want it so?
If this is a good idea, should the predominately
African-American or Hispanic areas in the United States be politically and
physically separated from the European-American areas? Is this not by logical
extension a validation of the ethnic cleansing in Palestine and a vote for the
Apartheid Wall? Are such dangerous musings worthy of consideration in
progressive spheres?
- Proposal
2: �Protection," the abolition of attacks on Iraqi civilians anywhere
by all forces of the regional power, and the prevention of such attacks
within the region by non-local Iraqi militias and foreign agents, for
example ethnic and political revenge killings, and al Qaeda operations;
the regional forces also oversee normal policing and crime prevention.
Comment: I have no comment to offer. The preceding
elaboration is incoherent, born dead, and lacks sufficient linguistic
construction to define the forces that populate post-invasion Iraq.
- Proposal
3: �Business," work to bring normality to the functioning of
utilities, domestic fuel supplies, schools and economic life within the
region, and an agreement to allow "normal life" and reliable
infrastructure to cross regional boundaries without impediment;
Comment: for once, I agree; but how can the Iraqis conduct �normal life� under an occupation
that bombs them on a daily basis, cuts off electricity and starves people as
collective punishment, and is overwhelming civilian society with fetid garbage
that has not been collected for over two and a half years?
- Proposal
4: �Liberation," cooperation in military and diplomatic operations to
isolate and then expel the invading and occupying forces;
Comment: What is Garcia proposing exactly? What are these
military and diplomatic operations? And who are involved in them? Most
importantly, who is Garcia designating to expel the invaders, and by what
means?
- Proposal
5: �Nationalism," while resistance to the occupation may entail
operations against the puppet government, every effort should be made to
minimize the killing of other Iraqis even if deemed
"collaborators" (see 2), and instead undermine the puppet
government by infiltration and by "turning" its Iraqi personnel
to the resistance by the appeal to nationalism, which will increasingly be
seen enacted in liberated territory
Comment: I have no comment to offer -- language, content,
and intent are mixed and unclear.
- Proposal
6: �To achieve such a grand coalition, the parties would have to set aside
some old ideas. The Kurds and Shia would have to give up on relying on
U.S. power to hold down the Sunnis to open up greater opportunities for
them to achieve regional and possibly even state power. They would have to
agree that arriving at a power-sharing agreement with the Sunnis in a
unified Iraq (though perhaps regionally autonomous) is their best option
to ensure a general prosperity.
Comment: I have no coment to offer -- language, content,
intent, and theorizations are incoherent, specifically on the matters of
statehood. The proposal exposes bewildering shortcomings on an issue that the
writer did not research.
- Proposal
7: �The insurgent Sunnis would have to let go of any lingering attachment
to Saddam Hussein and pre-invasion Baathist power. Like the Kurds and
Shia, they would have to see their best interests as a united Iraq.�
Comment: Again Garcia mimics Bush�s references to the Iraqi
resistance as a �Sunni insurgency.�
Regretfully, this type of �analysis� is not worth
addressing. Because of Garcia�s approach to U.S. colonialist imperialism and
its occupation of Iraq and he has forgotten Afghanistan, it doesn't meet solid
criteria of critical writing, it is not possible to address the rest of the
article.
Good intentions are never a substitute for clarity of
purpose or strong argument that considers well researched reality. To define
such a disjointed jamboree of claudicating ideas, poor information, and
handicapped analyses as a proposal for an American exit strategy from Iraq is
pathetic. And frankly, it is a huge disservice to the author, the readers, and
to the Iraqi people that Garcia wants, earnestly, to see free.
B.
J. Sabri is an Iraqi-American antiwar activist. Email: bjsabri@yahoo.com.