Do The People of Iraq Have The Right To
Resist The US Occupation?
Jack Smith—05/2005 |
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If the US/UK was occupied by an invading
force, wouldn't its citizens believe it their sovereign
right and duty to resist such an occupation by
all means possible? So why don't more of us extend
this understanding to the situation in Iraq? Jack Smith investigates… |
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 O
THE PEOPLE OF IRAQ have
the right to defend themselves against violent foreign
invasion and occupation by any means at their disposal
against an aggressive and rapacious enemy enjoying
overwhelming military superiority? |
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| This is a right Americans unquestionably would invoke
were their country invaded and occupied by a foreign
power. They would take whatever measures were necessary
to defeat the enemy and force it to withdraw. |
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| The United States government supports this position
and recognizes its validity in relation to all other
nations invaded by foreign aggressors — except
when it is Washington that initiates or supports the
invasion of another sovereign state. By White House
whim, the subject state loses its right to self-defense. |
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| In Iraq, for example, President George W. Bush,
who launched the unjust and unlawful invasion over
two years ago, is appalled by the suggestion that the
Iraqis have a right to fight back. The entire opinion-forming
mass media echoes this arrogant perspective. Bush defines
resistance to US aggression in Iraq as an act of "terrorism," and
not a legitimate struggle to reclaim national sovereignty
from the brutal occupation. |
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| Bush declares that the 140,000 American occupation
troops must remain to "defend Iraqi democracy" against
the resistance. Aside from the obvious fact that the
Quisling government of a subjugated country under foreign
military control cannot qualify as a democracy, Bush
disregards the fact that the raison d'être
of the resistance is predicated on the presence of
occupation forces he refuses to withdraw. |
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| The American antiwar movement is disunited on the
important question of whether or not to support the
right of the Iraqi people to resist US aggression
as best they can, including by force of arms. No group
that supports the resistance puts this view forward
as a basis for working with other peace groups. It
is as a statement of political principle, not a unity
demand. |
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| Within the broad political spectrum of the peace
movement, many local and national peace groups either
oppose supporting Iraqi's right to resist the
occupation or refuse to take a public position. Most
of these groups entertain moderate or liberal agendas.
A number of left groups, however, are certainly included. |
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| One of the two principal peace coalitions in the
United States, United for Peace and Justice, does not
put forward the view that the Iraqi people have a right
to resistance US aggression or address the question
at its rallies, according to its leadership, because
some groups in UPJ "strongly oppose" that
view. |
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| The other national coalition, ANSWER (Act Now to
Stop War & End Racism), takes the following position,
in response to our query May 27: |
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| We support the right of
self-determination in the struggle against imperialist
domination, and believe the Iraqi people have the
right to resist occupation by any means chosen.
The right to resist occupation is a concept enshrined
in international law…. This is not a matter
of political or ideological affinity. Nor is it
an issue of the tactics of war — all of which
are ugly. It boils down to this simple equation:
On the one side are all the forces fighting a war
against colonialism and occupation, and on the
other side are the colonialists, neo-colonialists
and their Iraqi agents. In that struggle we take
an unambiguous position opposing the colonizers.
To do otherwise would be to put entirely secondary
issues — ideology, war tactics, etc. — at
the forefront, while ignoring the core issue of
colonialism in Iraq and elsewhere. Moreover, since
we are a U.S. antiwar movement, and it is our country
that has invaded Iraq, we are obligated to be
crystal clear on this issue. |
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| This writer is in agreement with that position,
as was the case in the 1960s, well before ANSWER came
along, when sectors of the antiwar movement vociferously
objected to supporting the struggle, or at least supporting
the right to struggle, of the National Liberation Front
to free southern Vietnam from an even more treacherous
American intervention. |
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| We will discuss the various views circulating in
the peace movement and on the left, but first let's
examine the importance, composition, and methodologies
of the Iraqi resistance. |
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| It is crucial to understand that were it not for
the Iraqi resistance, the U.S. would have won a swift
victory in Iraq and quickly implemented the Bush administration's
neoconservative plan to extend American hegemony throughout
the entire Middle East under the guise of "promoting
democracy." Had Iraq simply surrendered, this
example of the Pentagon's invincibility would
have demoralized the entire region. It certainly would
have tempted the White House to barge into "rogue" Syria
and Iran to replace their governments with regimes
subordinate not only to Washington but to the requirements
of corporate globalization and transnational capital,
which, after all, is what "democratization" is
all about. |
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| Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld even had a
simple formula for obtaining this objective. Conservative
Harvard historian Niall Ferguson, who supports the
notion that an explicit American empire would be good
for the world, wrote in the New York Times May 24 that
Rumsfeld was guided by a theoretical blueprint for
conquest called the "10-30-30 timetable: 10 days
should suffice to topple a rogue regime, 30 days to
establish order in its wake, and 30 more days to prepare
for the next military undertaking." |
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| The resistance, thus, has erected two great obstacles
in the path of President Bush's drive to control
the vast petroleum reserves that have transformed barren
deserts into the most strategically important region
of the world today. First, the myth of invincibility
has been shattered by a small irregular urban guerrilla
force, Rumsfeld's plans for conquest have gone
up in smoke, and the Bush administration has evidently
curbed some of its more unsavory ambitions. |
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| Second, the unexpected difficulties the resistance
has created for Washington's occupation force,
supplemented by the existence of a large US antiwar
movement, has been the main reason why a majority of
the American people feel that the Iraq war has not
been worth the cost of U.S. lives and dollars. This
sentiment may undermine Bush for the rest of his term
in office unless the resistance is broken quickly,
which is now the Bush administration's highest
priority. |
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| The nature of the fight back itself has been grossly
distorted by the mass media at the behest of the White
House. It is important in this regard to recognize
three things: 1) The resistance is composed of political
as well as armed elements. 2) The masses of Iraqis
oppose the occupation and want U.S. troops to get out.
3) The resistance enjoys support from the people of
Iraq, despite U.S. efforts to neutralize various constituencies
through pressure, manipulation, grandiose promises,
threats and bribery. How else could an armed urban
guerrilla force function in heavily occupied territory
without the support of the people? |
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| The forces of resistance are diverse, decentralized
and led by many different factions, including reactionary
fundamentalists. There are no discernable left socialists
or communists in the leadership, largely because the
left has been suppressed for decades. Elements in the
resistance range from patriotic secular nationalists
to secular Ba'athists, to Sunni and Shia religious
fundamentalists, to pan-Islamic foreign jihadists,
to tribal-based groups with militias and so on. This
is partially a reflection of the religious and ethnic
differences of an historic nature which the foreign
invader has taken pains to exacerbate under the old
colonial rule of divide and conquer. |
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| Many of these groups use different tactics, armed
or political, to weaken the enemy. Their activities
are often not coordinated, and the actions of one are
not necessarily the practices of another. But together
they comprise an effective fighting opposition to Bush
of Baghdad and his Iraqi minions seeking power in a
government controlled by history's sixth (or is
it seventh?) empire to call Mesopotamia its own caliphate
— this time ruled from Christendom-on-Potomac. |
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| The resistance war is largely being fought with
small arms and homemade bombs. There are no countries
who would dare supply more powerful weapons for fear
of instant retaliation from the United States. Arrayed
against these forces is an occupying power possessing
the greatest arsenal of weapons, tanks, planes, communications
equipment and surveillance devices in human history.
Aside from street patrols, supply convoys, campaigns
to round-up anti-U.S. suspects and occasional large-scale
attacks, American forces are protected in military
bases that are extremely difficult to penetrate. There
are no hiding places for combatants, such as forests
and mountains, forcing them to fight almost exclusively
in heavily populated cities, towns and along certain
highways. |
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| These subjective and objective conditions determine
the composition of the resistance and the means deployed
to oust the invader. This is why the car bomb and suicide
bombers are deployed in the towns and cities. They
are the most powerful weapons the guerrillas have,
and they can be transported in daylight. The targets
are police stations, military checkpoints, passing
U.S. patrols and officials who cooperate with the occupation
authorities. The nature of car bombings in such tight
quarters results in civilians casualties, but they
are rarely if ever the primary target. Some of the
attacks that seem directed only at civilians may well
reflect sectarian religious provocations, not necessarily
associated with the resistance. |
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| Why do many antiwar groups and sectors of the left
withhold support from the Iraqi resistance, or even
the right to resistance? Clearly, this reluctance strengthens
Bush's contention that the resistance is composed
of nothing but unworthy terrorists intent upon crushing
Iraq's nascent "democracy," the latest
justification for keeping the army of occupation in
Iraq indefinitely. |
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| The pacifists are in a different situation than
the rest of the movement on this question. They in
principle oppose both defensive as well as offensive
violence, and many would support nonviolent resistance
to the American occupation, not that there appears
to be any. At issue are those larger sectors of the
movement which do not oppose violence in principal
and who would utilize violence to ward off an attack
on America or other countries, but who will not extend
that right to Iraq, the very country their government
is oppressing. |
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| In our view, there are two reasons the liberal sector
of the peace movement in particular tends to withhold
support from the insurgency. First there is the political
factor, as demonstrated in last year's presidential
elections where the candidate virtually all liberals
supported was committed to winning a victory in Iraq.
John Kerry's pro-war stance continues to reverberate,
manifesting itself in a variety of subtle ways. |
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| Some antiwar friends have told me that they hesitate
to call for immediate withdrawal "because we are
in so deep it would cause chaos if we pulled out now." For
others, who frequently proclaim they "support
the troops," it's must difficult to suggest the
resistance has a right to kill those troops in defense
of national sovereignty. Others are beset by the possibility
that the Iraqi people might be better off today than
under the previous regime which Bush deposed, despite
the war, occupation, 100,000 deaths, deepening chaos
and the prospect of civil war. |
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| The second reason seems be a desire for respectability
coupled with the fear that appearing to support the
resistance will cause the right-wing to label individuals
and the movement "unpatriotic" and "disloyal." These
are serious charges, but today's dreadful political
environment is not comparable to periods of repression
in the past, such as when they were levelled in the
red-hunting 1950s or a few years after World War I.
In any event, the right-wing already claims the entire
movement is composed of traitors, communists, flag
burners, and Bush haters. That's just every day
rightist rhetoric. |
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| The political left is also divided on the question.
Many left groups, peace organizations with an anti-imperialist
perspective, socialists and those further to the left
explicitly support the right of Iraq to engage in a
guerrilla war to defeat aggression. |
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| But some others on the left express various qualms,
mostly about the composition and the tactics of some
elements in the resistance. Several sources said they
were uncomfortable because "there are Ba'athist
elements active in the struggle and we don't want
to see the return of forces favorable to Saddam Hussein," as
though the question of who will ultimately govern Iraq
is for the American left to decide. Others hold back
because "Sunni Wahabbists" are part of the
diverse fight-back effort. And of course the supposed
presence of al-Qaeda operatives, although very small
in number, is another reason. Additional arguments
are critical of guerrilla tactics. |
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| Another sector of the left and antiwar movement
is simply resorting to political expediency and perhaps
a soupçon of opportunism, modifying its views
in order to attract "mainstream" elements
to its banner and if that means not backing the right
to resistance (or for that matter, not calling for
an end to the occupation of the Palestinian territories),
so be it. Others see the resistance as constituting
an obstacle to the creation of an improbable progressive
coalition of forces in Iraq who are essentially passive
toward the occupation in order to contest for influence,
or at least be invited to table where the powerful
dine. Some are supporters of the course followed by
the Iraqi Communist Party (which opposes the resistance,
seeks a place at the aforementioned table, and is willing
to work with the occupation). |
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| In a recent conversation in New York following the
2005 Left Forum this writer was confronted by several
people of social-democratic and left disposition (who
strongly supported immediate withdrawal) after indicating
that it was correct to back the right to resistance. "Do
you support car-bombings that kill innocent civilians,
too? I was asked by one. "Do you think it's
okay that they behead and kidnap people?" said
another. "Do you want the Ba'athists to put
in another Saddam?" queried a third. "Why
not give the middle forces in Iraq a chance to work
things out without the background noise of guerrilla
war continually disrupting any chance of dialogue?" intoned
a fourth. And lastly, "Doesn't your position
lead to civil war?" |
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| My reply, in effect, was a follows: |
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| It is not up to the peace movement and the left
in the United States to dictate the terms by which
a subject people is allowed to manifest opposition
to the violent invasion and occupation of their own
country by our government. The Iraqi people, like all
people throughout the world, are entitled to wage their
struggle against foreign invaders by any means at their
disposal. |
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| Given that the Iraqi people suffered a dozen years
of killer sanctions and frequent bombings by US and
British warplanes, followed by a "shock-and-awe" invasion
and a recklessly repressive and racist occupation that
has deprived many of them of reasonable living conditions,
their means are quite limited. Their entire society
is under intense surveillance and there is no freedom
for its people. They cannot fight a conventional war.
They do not have an armed forces to defend their rights.
The task of the army of the unemployed, who are being
trained by the Pentagon to be members of the "Iraqi
Army," is to suppress the struggle for national
liberation on behalf of the invader. So they use the
means and tactics at their command. |
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| Does that mean one must therefore support some of
the excesses of the resistance? No. It means we recognize
that in any struggle of this nature excesses take place,
although they are simply not comparable to the "excesses" involved
in George Bush's attack on Iraq. If we are so
concerned about excesses, the task is not to haughtily
distance ourselves from the resistance but to intensify
our campaign to remove the root cause of the resistance,
which is the continuing occupation and domination of
a sovereign country. At this stage, and I hope I'm
wrong, the U.S. has caused such a catastrophic disintegration
of a complex and ancient society that it will take
a long time with many hardships before things settle
down, even if the U.S. is kicked out. |
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| Listen to what our conservative ally, former UN
arms inspector Scott Ritter, had to say about this
several months ago when he argued it was in Washington's
interest to withdraw: "The battle for Iraq's sovereign
future is a battle for the hearts and minds of the
Iraqi people. As things stand, it appears that victory
will go to the side most in tune with the reality of
the Iraqi society of today: the leaders of the anti-U.S.
resistance… " |
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| If the U.S. continues its present course, he suggests,
"We will suffer a decade-long nightmare that will lead
to the deaths of thousands more Americans and tens
of thousands of Iraqis. We will witness the creation
of a viable and dangerous anti-American movement in
Iraq that will one day watch as American troops unilaterally
withdraw from Iraq every bit as ignominiously as Israel
did from Lebanon. The calculus is quite simple: the
sooner we bring our forces home, the weaker this movement
will be. And, of course, the obverse is true: the longer
we stay, the stronger and more enduring this by-product
of Bush's elective war on Iraq will be. There is no
elegant solution to our Iraqi debacle. It is no longer
a question of winning but rather of mitigating defeat." |
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| Whether sectors of our movement support the right
to resistance or not, the fact remains that this major
setback for the Bush administration would not have
come pass without the extraordinary uprising that developed
in the aftermath of Rumsfeld's "10-day war
and 30-day restoration of order." When the first
signs of a fightback occurred, Bush smirked, "Bring
'em on!" Well, as an antiwar activist who of course
would prefer a resistance movement with a different
political leadership, I'm just glad they exercised
their right to resist, or to "come on", as
Bush taunted. |
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Without that fightback by the Iraqi resistance, a
triumphant Bush by now might be dancing a jig in Damascus
or Teheran, or wherever else his neoconservative inclinations
and tanks were prepared to lead him. |
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| Copyright © 2005
Jack Smith |
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