The American ship of state will be broken on the rock of the nation of Iraq, leaving unconditional withdrawal as Washington's only option, writes Abdul-Ilah Al-Bayaty The defeat of the United States' aggression on Iraq was expected even before the beginning of the invasion. There were many indicators to show that the right of Iraqis to independence and democracy would be stronger than all the military might of the US. As is well known in war theories, aggressive power cannot achieve victory except under two scenarios: by its ability to destroy completely, or by destroying the will to continue resisting. In the case of the war on Iraq, it is evident that the enemy of the United States is the majority of the Iraqi people which it attacked to destroy its Arab-Muslim appurtenance and identity, plunder its natural resources and subjugate it to a puppet government it creates. This is impossible for geopolitical, moral and practical reasons. The consequence of this impossibility is that the more the United States tries to destroy its enemies in Iraq, the more it finds that the resistance of the Iraqi people grows. The Iraqi people by its culture, civilisation and heritage supported, and supports always, the oppressed against the oppressor. If it seemed to some that the Iraqi people are against Saddam Hussein, they forgot that the same people were never against the Iraqi state that the United States invaded to crush, abolish and remake according to its interests and will. Only some Kurdish leaders who seek separation, and some Shia politico- religious men who want to install Wilayat Al-Fakih (the rule of the supreme guardian) under Al-Hakim family, can accept to destroy the secular Iraqi state. Iraqis are proud of being Iraqis. They consider themselves all sons of Iraq and are proud of having a united Iraq that possesses oil, culture and science, water and a strategic position. The ignorance of the American strategists and their allies -- Ahmed Chalabi, Rend Rahim, Kinaan Makiyah, Falih Abdul-Jabar, and the like -- who theorised the US invasion of Iraq is such that they took their interests as reality, forgetting Iraqis' pride in their free will and independence, and in their Arab-Muslim identity which passes to them from father to son. They believed, or wanted to believe, that with some money and much terror, Iraqis would bow before their imperial project as they bowed -- at least they think -- before Saddam Hussein. They forgot, or wanted to forget, that Saddam Hussein, in spite of his dictatorship, has the support of the secular, educated middle class for the nationalisation of the oil industry, the development of Iraq's modern infrastructure, the universalisation of electricity, education and health services, and for putting Iraq on the plain of Cuba, Venezuela and North Korea in refusing imperialist diktat. They forgot also, Kurds and pro-Iranian religious leaders excepted, that Iraqis may differ but they continue to feel that they are the same people, that they are brothers, and that they don't want Iran, Arab, Western or Eastern interference in their affairs. In addition, the invasion of Iraq by the United States and its allies took place when imperialist powers wherever are no more able to invade other countries as they used to do in the 19th century. The reasons are multiple. Firstly, the wars in Vietnam, Cuba, South Lebanon and Palestine proved that military superiority and military victory don't mean the ability to occupy the invaded country if its people resist; and the Iraqi people proved it would resist from the very first battles in Um Qasr and Nassiryah. Secondly, it is the youth of the world and its progressive movements that builds world public opinion, not the mainstream media controlled by the US. This was proven in Seattle, Durban and in the world's demonstrations against the war on Iraq. We see the result of this fact in the demonstrations against the war in the US itself. Thirdly, war and invasion cost money and the American people have no interest in paying money to invade other countries, by way of which only the military industries and oil multinationals make profits, especially when the Iraqi military, as every patriot would do, prevented the occupation from using Iraqi petrol to finance the occupation's military operations. Fourthly, civilisation and international law don't permit any more adventurers like President Bush and the neo-buccaneers around him to insult the world's human consciousness by invading poor peoples in name of lies. Fifthly, Iraqi people, like all living peoples, do not accept occupation and slavery. Now we arrived to a situation where the US, by invading Iraq, is in a political and moral ruin from which it will not recover -- if it tries to recover -- for years. On the other hand, Iraq has suffered political, moral and economic crimes committed by the US. What is the way out? I think it is of no use all this changing of tactics, like the Cairo Conference or the phony next elections, whose end is that the US decides the destiny of Iraq and escapes liability in waging an illegal war on Iraq. As long as Iraq is not left to its people, America's military, economic, political and moral losses will continue to increase. There is no path before the US but to pull out rapidly and unconditionally, taking with it this monster which it created and called the government and security forces, recognising that all oil in Iraq is the property of the whole Iraqi people, and letting the legal administration pre-invasion -- especially the national army and its resistance groups -- take power and administer the country until free and fair democratic elections can take place. The people of Iraq will never, however long is the time afforded, recognise the puppet government, its contracts and agreements and laws, as legal or legitimate. In addition, if the US wants to have amicable relations with the people of Iraq, it should pay compensation for all the damage and suffering it caused Iraq.
