[Peace-discuss] Informative article!

[Morton K. Brussel]

Published on Thursday, July 19, 2007 by CommonDreams.org
Iraqis Will Be the Deciders
by Marjorie Cohn

As Congress debates whether to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq, George  
Bush is trying to buy time. He and Dick Cheney have no intention of  
ever pulling out of Iraq.

Cheney commissioned a 2000 report by the neoconservative Project for  
a New American Century, which said “the need for a substantial  
American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the  
regime of Saddam Hussein.” A document for Cheney’s secret energy task  
force included a map of Iraqi oilfields, pipelines, refineries,  
charts detailing Iraqi oil and gas projects, and a “Foreign Suitors  
for Iraq Oil Contracts.” It was dated March 2001, six months before  
9/11.

On April 19, 2003, shortly after U.S. troops invaded Baghdad, the New  
York Times quoted senior Bush officials as saying the United States  
was “planning a long-term military relationship with the emerging  
government of Iraq, one that would grant the Pentagon access to  
military bases and project American influence into the heart of the  
unsettled region.” They discussed “maintaining perhaps four bases in  
Iraq that could be used in the future.”

Indeed, Bush is building mega-bases In Iraq. Camp Anaconda, which  
sits on 15 square miles of Iraqi soil, has a pool, gym, theater,  
beauty salon, school and six apartment buildings. To avoid the  
negative connotation of “permanent,” Bush officials call their bases  
“enduring camps.” Our $600 million American embassy in the Green Zone  
will open in September. The largest embassy in the world, it is a  
self-contained city with no need for Iraqi electricity, food or water.

The motive for a permanent presence in Iraq has been obvious from day  
one. It’s the oil. The oft-mentioned benchmark for Iraqi progress,  
touted by Bush and Congress alike, is the so-called Iraqi oil law.  
The new law would turn over control of most oil production and  
royalties to foreign oil companies. The Iraqi people are opposed to  
the oil law.

The biggest impediment to the privatization of Iraq’s oil is the  
unions. Faleh Abood Umara, general secretary of the Iraqi Federation  
of Oil Unions, told U.S. photojournalist David Bacon, “It will  
undermine the sovereignty of Iraq and our people … If the law is  
ratified, there will be no reconstruction. The U.S. will keep its  
hegemony over Iraq.”

In early June, the Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions shut down the oil  
pipelines. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki capitulated to the  
union’s demand that implementation of the oil law be postponed until  
October so the union could propose alternatives.

Arab labor leader Hacene Djemam said, “War makes privatization easy:  
First you destroy society; then you let the corporations rebuild it.”  
After Halliburton entered Iraq in 2003 and tried to control the wells  
and rigs by withholding reconstruction aid, the union went on strike  
for three days. Exports stopped and government revenue was cut off.  
Halliburton shut down its operations.

Iraqis overwhelmingly oppose a permanent U.S. presence in their  
country. A group of Iraqi nationalists, including Sunnis, Shiites and  
Kurds, have formed a pan-Iraqi coalition to topple al-Maliki. They  
represent a vast majority of rank-and-file Iraqis outside of  
Parliament. Their primary basis of unity is opposition to the U.S.  
occupation of Iraq; they also strongly oppose Al Qaeda in Iraq and  
the Iranian influence in Iraq.

“All the problems come from the occupation,” Umara observed “… The  
occupation fosters the enormous corruption … As long as we have an  
occupation, we’ll have more sabotage and killing. But when people  
from the local tribes control the security, they have expelled the al- 
Qaeda forces and those others who are terrorizing people. This means  
we can protect ourselves and bring security to our nation, with no  
need of the U.S. forces. To those who believe that if the U.S. troops  
leave there will be chaos, I say, let them go, and if we fight each  
other afterwards, let us do that. We are being killed by the  
thousands already.”

The Iraqi unions want the occupation to end. Hashmeya Muhsin Hussein,  
president of the Electrical Workers Union of Iraq, told Bacon, “If it  
was up to Bush, he’d occupy the world. But that’s not what the  
nations of the world want. Would they accept occupation, as we have  
had to do? Our nation does not want to be occupied, and we’ll do our  
best to end it.”

Nationalists in the Iraqi Parliament recently passed a bill calling  
for the United States to set a timetable for withdrawal, and another  
demanding the Iraqi government present any plan to extend the  
occupation past 2007 to Parliament. They will not accept a proposal  
that includes permanent U.S. bases on Iraqi soil. Our national  
discourse must include a discussion of U.S. intentions for Iraq after  
a troop withdrawal. But ultimately, as in Vietnam, it will be the  
Iraqi people who are the deciders.

Marjorie Cohn is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and  
President of the National Lawyers Guild. Her new book, Cowboy  
Republic: Six Ways the Bush Gang Has Defied the Law, was just  
published. Her articles are archived at http://www.marjoriecohn.com.

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