If Christopher
Hitchens should happen to fall ill, Wadood Hamad might want to consider offering his services as a ghostwriter. Hamad has mastered Hitch's combination of self-righteousness, elitism, and dishonesty.
Regarding Hamad's
charges against my edited book Iraq Under Siege, I will let readers judge for
themselves the contribution the book has made. No doubt the careful reader will find evidence of
my erstwhile Baathist leanings in my description of Saddam Hussein as a "tyrant ... who
brutalized his population." I'll also let readers of that book and my other writing on Iraq weigh
Hamad's claim that "the murder of innocent Iraqi civilians merits no mention or condemnation"
from myself or my comrades.
On more serious
matters, the bottom line is this: the best way to reduce the massive suffering of Iraqi civilians is
to push for an immediate end to the U.S. occupation, which is the greatest cause of
Iraqi suffering and which is only encouraging reactionary political developments in Iraq and
globally. Beyond that, we should be pushing for the U.S. government and the other governments
responsible for arming and backing Hussein during his worst crimes, and then further devastating
the society in the 1991 and 2003 invasions and throughout the years of sanctions, to pay
reparations to the Iraqi people. We must also call for the cancellation of all debts that Iraq still
owes from the previous regime (many of which still have not been forgiven).
Hamad presents a
caricature of the real dynamics on the ground in Iraq. Among sober analysts of those fighting the
occupation forces, the Financial Times notes, "The most important point of
agreement is that, although foreign fighters allied with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi continue to gain
the most attention, the insurgency remains overwhelmingly domestic, Sunni and nationalist."
Writing about "Arab and Islamist groups with significant numbers of foreign volunteers, as well as
Iraqi Islamist extremists. . . . like the one led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi," military analyst Anthony
Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies concludes, "It is unlikely that
such groups make up more 10 percent of the insurgent force, and may make up around 5
percent."
Nor is the opposition
exclusively Sunni or Salafist in character. As historian Gareth Porter observes,
"Shiite responsiveness to [Moqtada] al-Sadr's appeals to oppose British actions symbolizing the loss of Iraqi independence should have come as no surprise. For a year and a half, it has been clear that Moqtada al-Sadr has enjoyed widespread support among Shiites because of his anti-occupation stance. Sadr's popularity had skyrocketed in April 2004, when the Mahdi Army challenged foreign occupation troops in eight different Shiite cities, including Basra. According to an article by counterinsurgency specialists Jeffrey White and Ryan Philips in Jane's Intelligence Review, polling by an Iraqi research organization showed that only one percent of those surveyed had supported him in December 2003, but 68 percent supported him when his forces were fighting U.S. troops in April 2004.
"The stunning transformation of Basra from a secure rear area for U.S. and British troops into a center of anti-occupation agitation reveals the utter weakness of the Shiite political base on which the United States must now rely to sustain its occupation of the country."
On several occasions
Sunnis and Shias have taken to the streets together in defiance of the United States. In April
2004, some two hundred thousand Iraqis marched in Baghdad under unified Shia and Sunni anti-
occupation banners. Indeed, the fundamental division in Iraq today is not between Sunni and
Shia, or other religious or ethnic groups, argues Wamidh Nadhmi of Baghdad University, but
between "the pro-occupation camp and the anti-occupation camp."
"[T]he pro-occupation people are either completely affiliated to the United States and Britain, in effect puppets, or they saw no way to overthrow Saddam without occupation. Let's agree not to indulge in slander but discuss the issue openly. Unfortunately, the pro-occupation people tend not to distinguish between resistance and terrorism, or between anti- occupation civil society and those who use violence. They call us all Saddam remnants, reactionaries, revenge-seekers, mercenaries, misguided, or foreigners."
As Nadhmi suggests,
all resistance in Iraq is characterized by pro-occupation forces as acts of terrorism, a
phenomenon with a long colonial legacy. The hypocrisy runs far deeper, though. In every case,
those who denounce violence most forcefully are the military and political leaders who use
preponderant military force with impunity, while simultaneously blocking meaningful avenues for
peaceful opposition.
We should not be
surprised that people would engage in guerrilla attacks when confronting the world's greatest
military power, armed with unimaginable technological advantages. "As a consequence of its
overwhelming power and prowess, the American Army is not likely to face an enemy similar to
itself," Dexter Filkins of the New York Times observes. "It is more likely to face
guerrillas. Guerrilla wars typically begin when a smaller army is confronted by a larger one,
forcing it to turn to the advantages it has: its ability to hide amid the population, its knowledge of
the local terrain, its ability to mount quick and surprising attacks and then melt away before the
larger army can strike back. This is more or less the case in Iraq, as it was in Vietnam."
Certainly in Iraq
opportunistic groups and individuals have carried out indefensible acts of terrorism, including
sectarian attacks completely at odds with achieving genuine national liberation for Iraqis. A small
minority in Iraq has attempted to provoke a civil war between Sunnis and Shiites, Kurds, and
other minorities. But Iraqis themselves have been quick to reject such sectarian attacks. In
March 2005, the Muslim Scholars Association denounced a suicide bombing in Hilla that killed
more than one hundred and twenty Iraqis. "This operation will open the door for our enemies to
carry out more of their evil designs in Iraq," the organization said. "The association demands that
all such attacks against innocent Iraqis be stopped." Ahmed Abdul-Ghafur, imam of the Sunni
Um al-Qura mosque, also protested the attack in Hilla, a predominantly Shia city. "This is not the
right way to drive the occupation out," he said. "Killing Iraqis is not the way to liberation. . . . We
call upon those who have power over these groups to stop massacring Iraqis." That same month,
Iraqi oil workers and trade unionists from Basra marched in Baghdad to protest the killing of oil
workers, chanting, "No, no, to terror!" For the most part, though, the establishment media have
largely ignored such protests.
Indeed, there is no
single resistance in Iraq but a broad resistance struggle that takes a variety of forms. "The
insurgency is not a monolithic or united movement directed by a leadership with a unitary and
disciplined ideological vision," writes Ahmed Hashim of the United States Naval War College's
strategic research department. "Its range encompasses all classes, both urban and rural. Its
ranks include students, intellectuals, former soldiers, tribal youths, farmers, and Islamists."
In challenging their
occupation, the people of Iraq have transformed the calculus of U.S. imperialism. "What if there
had been no resistance in Iraq?" asks Tariq Ali. "The warmongers would have claimed that the
occupation was a triumph, established a collaborationist regime and moved on to change the
regime in Syria and, possibly, Iran. Dissent in the U.S. and Britain would have been neutered,
the media would have remained friendly and the lies used to justify the war would have been
happily forgotten. The means, we would have been told, justify the ends. And the snapshots of
Iraqis being tortured would have remained a family secret."
-- December 25, 2005
ANTHONY ARNOVE is editor of Iraq Under Siege: The Deadly Impact of Sanctions and War and two books with Howard Zinn, Voices of a People's History of the United States and Terrorism and War. He is on the editorial board of International Socialist Review.