How far will the US go to maintain its illegitimate primacy in Iraq?
Tariq Ali Saturday February 14, 2004 The Guardian
The whole world knows that Bush and Blair lied to justify the war, but do they know the price being paid on the ground in Iraq? First, the blood price - paid by civilians and others this week as every week. More than 50 people died on Tuesday when a car bomb ripped through Iraqis queuing to join the police force. The US military blamed al- Qaida loyalists and foreign militants for this and other suicide bombings. But occupations are usually ugly. How then can resistance be pretty? {snip}
But it's not just about politics and religion. Power leads to money and clientelism. There are members of families and tribes linked to the main clerical groups in the south and they are impatient. A great deal will depend on two key issues: who controls Iraq's oil and how long US/UN troops should remain in the country. As a result of the invasion and occupation of Iraq, the clerical regime in Iran has become a key player. Once part of the "axis of evil", its close ties with Sistani necessitate a Washington-Teheran rapprochement.
And how better to facilitate this than by dredging up the bogey of the Wahhabite al-Qaida? The US may have sought to blame it for this week's car bomb attacks. But this ignores the fact that "if you collaborate, then be prepared to pay the price" has been the message of virtually every national struggle over the last century.
In Vichy France and occupied Yugoslavia and later in Vietnam, Algeria, Guinea and Angola, collaborators were regularly targeted. Then, as in Iraq today, the resistance was denounced by politicians and the tame press as "terrorists". When the occupying armies withdrew and the violence ceased, many of the "terrorists" became "statesmen".
Some of us who were opposed to the war argued that while US military occupation of Iraq would be easy they would face a resistance on different levels. And, as becomes plainer every day, the achilles tendon of the occupation is its incapacity to control a hostile population. Hence the need for collaborators. Destroying states by overwhelming military power is one thing. State building is a more complex operation and requires, at the very least, a friendly if not a docile population http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1147921,00.html