Home - SR Editions - Socialist Resistance No.47

Bush on threshold of defeat in Iraq

George Bush is staring political and military defeat in the face in Iraq . The American commander in Iraq , General David Petraeus, will report to Congress in mid-September on the success of “the surge” of 30 000 US troops into key parts of the country.

Bush had tried to influence Petraeus’ views by asserting that the Americans will not leave Iraq in the manner they left Vietnam . They may have no choice.

In July The Economist wrote, “Continuing to support this war has now become a near-suicidal strategy for any ambitious politician”. This is because it is obvious to anyone with a grip on reality that there is no longer any way in with the occupying forces can impose their will on the country.

British troops in Basra are planning to withdraw from their frequently attacked base in the centre of the town to the relative safety of the airport on the outskirts. Even the puppet government of Nuri al-Maliki in Baghdad showed that it is deeply pessimistic by deciding that the month of August was better spent on holiday than trying to run the country.

Bush had declared that the surge would give al-Maliki’s government a chance to establish a political consensus and the popular legitimacy necessary to face down the insurgency. Instead it has shown itself to be weak, clueless and sectarian. Only a party which has distinguished itself by opposing the occupation will have the credibility to bring peace to Iraq , that is if the country does not fragment along sectarian lines.

In Iraq the slaughter of innocents in suicide bombs is attributed by the occupiers to those resisting occupation. In Afghanistan it is the British and Americans whose hands drip with civilian blood. Brown has just got in on the act with an extra £7 billion for “defence”, primarily the Afghan war. According to Human Rights Watch half of the people who are killed in Afghanistan in fighting between British, American and other occupation forces and the insurgents are civilians.

This is up from about twenty five percent last year when more than 4,400 died, including over 1,000 civilians. Much of this carnage is caused by British and American troops using aircraft to bomb villages in which they claim there are Afghan fighters.

These war crimes pass without comment in much of the British media. The comments made last year by John Reid that British troops might leave Helmand province without firing a shot have proven to be a cynical lie. Socialists will welcome the defeat of British and American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan .

Yet the peoples of those two countries have endured unimaginable horrors on account of Bush and Blair’s determination to dominate the region. Their societies have been pulverised and almost every progressive organisation has been crushed.

This is the true cost of imperialist war.