Workers World, editorial (lederartikel), 12. maj 2005

Each week the truth about Iraq comes through more clearly for those who choose to look. The U.S. occupation is brutal, criminal, killing civilians as much as combatants. The Iraqi resistance is growing and gathering more support from a population that may be war-weary but is determined to free itself from foreign rule. The equally vicious imperialist occupation of Afghanistan, which Washington tried to justify with the pretext of the post-9/11 “war on terror,” is also arousing mass opposition.

The monopoly media here has paid little attention to the battle looming around the Iraqi city of Qaim near the Syrian border and the towns around it for the past six weeks. But a heavy force of U.S. Marines at nearby Camp Gannon has been surrounding the populated areas since early April, cutting off water and electricity to the civilian population. Those resisting the U.S. occupation from Qaim warned at that time that there would be a spike of attacks across Iraq if the U.S. siege against the population was not lifted.

That spike has taken place. Since early May hundreds of Iraqis, many of them soldiers in the puppet army or police or new recruits for these collaborationist forces, have been killed. The count of U.S. troops killed has also increased.

So have Iraqi casualties at the hands of the occupation troops.

On May 9 the U.S. opened an offensive against the town of Ubaydi in the Qaim area that was reported as the largest since the murderous assault on Falluja last fall. Many suspect it also threatens to spill over into nearby Syria, which the Pentagon charged with harboring “terrorists”—one of Washington’s terms to describe those resisting its attempt to rule the country with an iron hand.

The U.S. command announced a glorious victory. With a body count reminiscent of the war on Vietnam, news media announced that 100 “insurgents” had been killed by the Marines. For sure, Iraqis were killed. But many were civilians, non-combatants, killed by U.S. 500-pound bombs and shelling.

The Baghdad command’s exaggerated claims were quickly debunked, even by local commanders. One reporter from the pro-U.S. press, writing for the May 10 Chicago Tribune, shed some light. “Marine commanders expressed surprise Monday, not only at the insurgents’ presence [in Ubaydi] but also the extent of their preparations, as if they expected the Marines to come.”

The resistance fighters dug in, fought back and handed the Marines casualties.

The insurgents knew more about the Marines than the Marines knew about them. Marine Col. Steven Davis told the reporter it was more like “two dozen” Iraqi fighters killed, and even that was a guess. Davis credited the resistance fighters with skill and training. Then on May 11, a resistance unit kidnapped the governor of Qaim’s Anbar province, telling his family they’d let him go when the U.S. withdraws from Qaim.

It sounds more and more like Vietnam.

If the Iraq occupation—so painful for the Iraqi people—wasn’t enough of a debacle for the Pentagon, the news from Afghanistan piles it on. Hearing of a Newsweek article that reports that U.S. guards at Guantanamo Bay prison camp were placing the Koran in toilets in front of Muslim prisoners, 10,000 Afghanis took to the streets in Jalalabad. The puppet president, U.S. citizen Hamid Karzai, ordered his troops to fire on the demonstrators, killing three and wounding 60. The protesters were shouting “Death to America’s allies,” “Death to Karzai” and “Death to Bush.”

The anti-war movement here can demonstrate its solidarity with the people of Iraq and Afghanistan by making its top priority the immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops.