[NYTr] Iraq: Senate proposal another bad plan

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Workers World - Oct 11, 2007 issue
http://www.workers.org/2007/world/iraq-1011

WW commentary

Senate proposal: another bad plan

With the Pentagon on the brink of defeat, the U.S. Senate 
is offering its own bad idea for a U.S. "victory."

By John Catalinotto

During the last four-and-a-half years the U.S. occupation has murdered
a million Iraqi people and destroyed Iraqi social life, producing a
humanitarian crisis that in a just world would have already earned the
Bush gang a conviction for war crimes.

Now, with the Pentagon on the brink of defeat, the U.S. Senate is
offering its own bad idea for a U.S. “victory.” Instead of cutting off
war funds or even setting a timetable for withdrawal, the Senate had
the unbounded arrogance to propose that Iraq be divided into three
parts—Shiite, Sunni and Kurd—with an umbrella federal government in
Baghdad. Sen. Joseph Biden, a Democrat from Delaware, has been pushing
this partition of Iraq since late 2003, when it became apparent that
the Iraqi occupation would not be cheap, clean or easy. On Sept. 26 the
measure passed 75-23.

Partition has always been a weapon in the imperialist arsenal. All the
actions of the occupation have provoked differences among those in the
population who identify as Shiite or Sunni, causing much death and
suffering, while also encouraging the separation of the Kurdish region.

In the Balkans, partition was a central feature of the NATO strategy to
recolonize Yugoslavia. Some senators said they based their support for
Biden’s Iraq proposal on the Bosnia experience. The NATO strategy,
backed by a U.S. air war, turned the former socialist Yugoslavia into
half a dozen semicolonial ministates.

The U.S. occupation of Iraq, on the other hand, has been an unmitigated
disaster for the U.S., as well as inflicting misery on the Iraqis. Ever
since the Iraqi resistance first sprang up in the summer of 2003 and
started creating a quagmire for U.S. troops, Biden and others have
pushed their program for the division of the country.

Until recently this idea of division had received little public support
in the U.S. imperialist establishment. There is no doubt, however, that
now many look to division or partition as a way out of the quagmire.
But judging by the first public reactions out of Iraq, there is no
grouping, party or political leaders, with the possible exception of
some of the Kurdish parties and the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, who
will openly support it.

Even the U.S. Embassy there had to criticize the Senate. Also, the
U.S.-installed puppet regime led by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki
attacked the plan. Moqtada al-Sadr, the head of the Shiite-based Mahdi
Army, which is part of the puppet government but which also has clashes
with the occupation, has also denounced it, as has Grand Ayatollah Ali
al-Sistani. All the Sunni-based parties that participate in the puppet
government are also against it.

Whether one takes these groups at their word or not, their opposition
means they know the mass of the Iraqi people insist on remaining in a
single country. And they vehemently oppose any scheme or plan imposed
on them by a hated U.S. occupation force.

For varied reasons, the governments of Iraq’s neighboring states of
Turkey, Iran and Saudi Arabia have also denounced the U.S. Senate’s
plan.

What is more important than the reaction of the neighboring states and
of these forces allied with the puppet regime is the reaction of the
Iraqi resistance. A hint of this comes from the Sunni Association of
Muslim Scholars, which opposes the U.S. occupation. It condemned the
U.S. Senate plan, saying that anyone who backed it would be “a traitor
of the nation and faith.”

There is no doubt that the Iraqi Ba’ath Party, the Iraqi Patriotic
Alliance and the other organizations of the resistance, who have pinned
down the Pentagon for the past 54 months, will refuse any “solution”
imposed by the U.S. occupation forces, be it a puppet central
government or a division of their country into three parts. And that is
the most important reaction because, however long the struggle takes,
Iraq’s future belongs to the resistance, which is the only honest
representative of the Iraqi people.

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