Resistance is the first step towards Iraqi independence

[IndianaGreen]

Resistance is the first step towards Iraqi independence

This is the classic initial stage of guerrilla warfare against a colonial occupation

Tariq Ali
Monday November 3, 2003
The Guardian

Some weeks ago, Pentagon inmates were invited to a special in-house showing of an old movie. It was the Battle of Algiers, Gillo Pontecorvo's anti-colonial classic, initially banned in France. One assumes the purpose of the screening was purely educative. The French won that battle, but lost the war.

At least the Pentagon understands that the resistance in Iraq is following a familiar anti-colonial pattern. In the movie, they would have seen acts carried out by the Algerian maquis almost half a century ago, which could have been filmed in Fallujah or Baghdad last week. Then, as now, the occupying power described all such activities as "terrorist". Then, as now, prisoners were taken and tortured, houses that harboured them or their relatives were destroyed, and repression was multiplied. In the end, the French had to withdraw.

As American "postwar" casualties now exceed those sustained during the invasion (which cost the Iraqis at least 15,000 lives), a debate of sorts has begun in the US. Few can deny that Iraq under US occupation is in a much worse state than it was under Saddam Hussein. There is no reconstruction. There is mass unemployment. Daily life is a misery, and the occupiers and their puppets cannot provide even the basic amenities of life. The US doesn't even trust the Iraqis to clean their barracks, and so south Asian and Filipino migrants are being used. This is colonialism in the epoch of neo-liberal capitalism, and so US and "friendly" companies are given precedence. Even under the best circumstances, an occupied Iraq would become an oligarchy of crony capitalism, the new cosmopolitanism of Bechtel and Halliburton.

It is the combination of all this that fuels the resistance and encourages many young men to fight. Few are prepared to betray those who are fighting. This is crucially important, because without the tacit support of the population, a sustained resistance is virtually impossible.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1076532,00.html

[NNN0LHI]

1. This whole article is great but the last sentence says it all. Thanks IG

>>>Meanwhile, Iraqis have one thing of which they can be proud and of which British and US citizens should be envious: an opposition.<<<

[IndianaGreen]

2. Check Tariq Ali's "Bush in Babylon: The Recolonisation of Iraq"

In November 2003, Verso will publish a devastating critique of America's military occupation of Iraq, by one of the leaders of the global antiwar movement, Tariq Ali. Eschewing the liberal option of hand-wringing and the fashionable lurch to the right by some former leftists, Bush in Babylon will stand apart from the morass of sycophantic books now being presented as serious analysis by mainstream publishers.

Detailing the longstanding imperial ambitions of key figures in the Bush administration and how war profiteers close to Bush are cashing in, Bush in Babylon is unique in moving beyond the corporate looting by the US military government to offer the reader an expert and in-depth analysis of the extent of resistance to the US occupation in Iraq. The sum is a characteristically revealing blend of politics, history, and culture proposing that the US war on Iraq marks a historical shift in imperial occupation and resistance that will mark the whole of the twenty-first century.

On 15 February, eight million people marched on the streets of five continents against a war that had not yet begun. A historically unprecedented number of people rejected official justifications for war that the secular Ba'ath Party of Iraq was connected to al-Qaeda or that "weapons of mass destruction" existed in the region, outside of Israel.

More people than ever are convinced that the greatest threat to peace comes from the center of the American empire and its satrapies, with Blair and Sharon as lieutenants to the Commander-in-Chief. Examining how countries from Japan to France eventually rushed to support US aims, as well as the futile UN resistance, Tariq Ali proposes a re-founding of Mark Twain's mammoth American Anti-Imperialist League (which included William James, W.E.B. DuBois, William Dean Howells, and John Dewey) to carry forward the antiwar movement. Meanwhile, as Iraqis show unexpected hostility and independence, rather than gratitude, for "liberation," Ali is unique is uncovering the depth of the resistance now occurring inside occupied Iraq.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1859845835/qid=1067836172/sr=2-1/ref=sr_2_1/002-7680760-1764814