Opposing an Unjustified War and Occupation

In the months leading up to the attack on Iraq last March, the Tufts Coalition Opposed to War on Iraq (TCOWI) argued that the coming war was wrong. Iraq, we declared -- along with many others -- was not a threat to U.S. security. It was not perceived as a threat by the six neighbors bordering it. It had no significant link to al-Qaeda and no connection to 9-11.

But key figures in the Bush administration were determined to wage war and sought to use the emotions produced by the Sept. 11 attacks, and disinformation about Iraq, to whip up support for an assault most of the world -- including close U.S. allies -- condemned as illegal. They played on fears of terrorism. Also, erroneously linking the weakened, isolated, secular Saddam to the fundamentalist bin Laden who actually hates much that the Iraqi stands for, the Bush administration played on fears that some Americans hold towards Arabs and Muslims in general. The mainstream media could not have been more cooperative; the Big Lie succeeded.

But ever since a flight-suited Bush proclaimed "Mission Accomplished" last May 1, the imperialist project has met with difficulties that have dampened popular enthusiasm, and exposed it for what it is: a crime. The occupying troops did not meet with riotous jubilation but with sullen tolerance at best, violent resistance at worst. Since May 1, 550 U.S. troops have been killed, 257 killed in combat. By one estimate, 16,000 Iraqi troops (mostly young conscripts fighting invaders, which is what armies most legitimately do) and 8,000 civilians have been killed by "Coalition" forces. The armed resistance is ideologically diverse, and cannot be attributed merely to Saddam die-hard supporters and religious fanatics. When your country is invaded for no good reason, people tend to react defensively.

The lies surrounding the war have gradually unraveled. The false claim of a Niger uranium shipment is only the tip of the iceberg; virtually all the claims made by Secretary of State Colin Powell to the U.N. last February have proven unfounded. The CIA arms inspector David Kay confirmed what U.N. inspectors (who've been forbidden access to occupied Iraq) were saying before the war: there are no significant stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). The very specific, detailed statements of Bush, Powell and especially Vice President Cheney were all fear-mongering exaggerations and lies -- as TCOWI believed, before the war.

The neo-conservatives in the administration most enthusiastic about the creation of an empire in the Middle East -- their stated goals including regime change in Syria, Iran, and Saudi Arabia -- have been hit with a series of scandals. Cheney and leading neo-conservative ideologue Richard Perle are under investigation for shady financial dealings, and Cheney's staff is suspected of vindictively "outing" the CIA wife of former ambassador Joseph Wilson, who of course had enraged them by spilling the beans on the Niger uranium lie. Bush's support is way down. Now less that 50 percent of the U.S. public thinks the Iraq War was "worth it." The skepticism that should have been there a year ago is becoming prevalent.

Things have gone so badly that U.S. plans for further aggression may be on hold, at least until after the election. Still, the government insists on a huge, indefinite military occupation of Iraq. Many, including former opponents of the war, say the U.S. must stay in Iraq to fix what it broke. That's like saying a thug that kidnapped and raped someone should stay with the victim indefinitely to make amends. Common sense says: separate the criminal from the victim. Foreign troops -- hated, scared, ill-trained in "peace-keeping," trigger-happy, prone to respond to resistance by punitively uprooting date palms, encircling villages with barbed wire, busting in doors, handcuffing families, conducting brutal roundups that generate more outrage -- cannot bring peace and stability, much less "democracy" to Iraq.

Indeed, the history of U.S. actions in the region is one of consistent reluctance to tolerate more expression of popular will, a will that might challenge "U.S. interests" in the region. But the popular call for genuine elections in colonized Iraq is too powerful to ignore. So the Bushites are obliged to pull in the UN, which they once disparaged as irrelevant, hoping it will help them in preserving order and lend some legitimacy to the hand-picked Interim Council while they bide their time, hoping to create a pro-U.S. regime that won't trigger a civil war.

TCOWI's position is: Bring the troops home now. They can do no good in the country they were sent, illegally and unjustly, to conquer. Iraq's future is for the Iraqis to decide, perhaps with some assistance from the U.N. We must not endorse the colonization, nor the preposterous conflation of the Iraqi resistance with "terrorism," "evil," or the perpetrators of Sept. 11. TCOWI opposes the reckless expansion of imperialist power that will require many more American, Iraqi and other deaths in the service of U.S. corporate profits and geopolitical advantage.

Gary Leupp is a Professor of History.