EDITORIAL
Five Years of Infamy:
The U.S. War on the People of Iraq

Mar 17, 2008

Based on one lie after another, the Bush administration took this country into an infamous war against the people of Iraq.

Starting March 20, 2003, five years later, it gives no sign of stopping. John McCain is talking about a 50-year occupation. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama each pretend they will remove troops, but each very carefully makes no commitment. How many troops will come out? When? Over how long a period to remove them all? Neither say.

All three of the presidential contenders voted for every funding measure for the war. All three voted against the one measure that called for a simple setting of target dates for withdrawing troops. It couldn’t be more clear: those who are vying to take over the government promise only more of the same.

They are as responsible as Bush for the consequences of this war: over one-hundred thousand Iraqis killed by military action, more than 600,000 dead because of what the war has done to the infrastructure in Iraq–destroying hospitals, making drinkable water hard to come by, driving out most doctors and medical personnel, pushing the cost of food and other necessities beyond the reach of ordinary Iraqis, etc.

And it’s worse even than that. Four million Iraqis have been driven from their homes. Two million, those who had the means, got out of the country. Two million more, who had no way to escape, live in refugee camps out in the desert, or stacked up dozens to a small apartment or hut.

Some people left their homes to avoid the bombing or military action. But most were driven out by actions purposely taken to purge Iraqi neighborhoods. Death squads–some in militia uniforms, some in Iraqi army uniforms, some in U.S. uniforms–swept through whole neighborhoods or villages, turning them into bloody ghettoes.

Bush may have planned, lied and schemed to carry out this war in the interests of big U.S. oil companies, but the Republican Party and the Democratic Party fully share responsibility for this crime, a crime that includes the deaths in Iraq of U.S. soldiers, the suicides in this country after they return, and the life of misery and disability to which many are condemned.

From the beginning, the population knew this war was about oil and not weapons of mass destruction. If we knew, then the politicians–the Clintons, Obamas, Kennedys, McCains, etc.–they all knew.

If we wait on them, we will be going through this same election scam, with the same promises four years from now.

Why should we wait on them to stop this war? U.S. soldiers are leaving the army, others are refusing, even if only indirectly, to carry out orders in Iraq. Such actions are what eventually led, during the Viet Nam war, to the army crumbling.

When an army crumbles, wars end. Do we want an end to this war? Then give our support to the troops, whose actions and inactions are already creating problems for the generals.