For all the carnage and devastation they have wreaked on Iraq, the occupying forces are staring in the face of a most ignominious defeat.
The resistance attacks on the occupation forces have become ever more lethal and frequent – running at 180 a day. Even the fortified Green Zone in Baghdad is no longer under the control of the occupation forces and its puppets.
The imperialist occupiers have already lost the war, and lost it big time. Everyone, from the ordinary person in the street to the highly-placed and some of the most authoritative representatives of Anglo-American imperialism, knows and openly admits that the US has lost the war and the Iraqi resistance are on the verge of a historic victory which will reshape the political map of the Middle East and have worldwide ramifications in a manner most unfavourable to imperialism.
Henry Kissinger, the notorious war criminal and a former US secretary of state who has advised the Bush administration on the war in Iraq, said that he did not believe that the US could win a military victory in Iraq. Colin Powell, former secretary of state, has gone on record as saying that the US army was “about broken”. A joint report prepared by 16 US intelligence agencies has stated that the US no longer has the option of winning the war.
Even that war criminal and inveterate liar, Tony Blair, when asked, during his appearance on al-Jazeera television, whether the Anglo-American invasion and occupation of Iraq had “so far been pretty much of a disaster”, replied: “It has.”
The monthly ‘security drives’ by the Iraqi puppet government and its imperialist cohorts have been an unmitigated failure. Despite the grandiose plans and the ever-increasing US troop levels, the Iraqi resistance to occupation has not reduced one bit.
Meanwhile, the Iraqi ‘government’ has failed to gain even the slightest credibility among the people of Iraq. This puppet administration only serves the interests of US imperialism, along with a handful of its venal stooges brought back from their émigré existence abroad on US tanks and with no social base in Iraq.
Occupation weakening the US
The strategy pursued by US imperialism, particularly by the Bush administration, has gone up in smoke. A war waged for domination has turned into an instrument for undermining US domination to such an extent that it faces expulsion from the Middle East. Anti-imperialist sentiment is raging from Beirut to Tehran and from Baghdad to Kabul. Gone are the days of unimpeded exploitation of Middle Eastern oil resources. The wars being conducted in Iraq and Afghanistan are only serving to weaken Anglo-American imperialism on a world-historic scale.
This is providing a well-deserved breathing space to countries such as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and Iran – both targets of US imperialist hostility; it is furnishing an opportunity to the democratic nationalist governments in Latin America, such as those of Venezuela and Bolivia, to push ahead with a programme of democratic economic and political transformation of their societies, while the US is bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan; and it is creating deep divisions within the US ruling circles and intensifying divisions between the various imperialist countries.
Desperate quest for oil and domination
Although it is clear to proletarians and oppressed peoples of the world, as well as to the more far-sighted representatives of even American imperialism, that the US has lost the Iraq war, it does not follow that the US will readily withdraw its mercenary soldiery from Iraq. The whole logic of imperialism, its crisis-driven quest for domination, blinds it to the lessons of history and the defeat facing it alike.
The US has no intention of pulling out of Iraq, for such a pull-out would signal defeat and an end to its domination of the Middle East – the repository of two thirds of the world’s known oil resources; further, such a pull-out would put paid to the US strategy of world domination. With its relatively weakened economic position, the US is extremely reliant on the use, and threat of use, of military power for preventing rival imperialist powers, rising powers and the so-called ‘rogue states’, from presenting any challenge to it.
It is a measure of its determination to hold on to Iraq that the US has built four major bases in the country and is constructing the biggest and most fortified embassy ever seen in Baghdad.
Anglo-American imperialism is still hoping to steal $200bn worth of profits out of Iraqi oil over the next 25 years through production sharing agreements (PSAs), which, it is estimated, would provide the imperialist oil multinationals with yearly profits of between 40 and 160 percent.
In view of the Iraqi resistance, the expectations and hopes of imperialism are certain to remain unrealised pipe dreams.
Oil production in chaos
Oil production in Iraq is in a state of chaos, thanks to the sabotage of pipelines, refineries and other oil infrastructure by the resistance, the lack of investment due to the security environment, and corruption and disputes over the division of spoils between imperialism and its stooges as well as among the stooges themselves.
As a result, oil production is well below pre-invasion levels. Iraq is currently producing just about 2 million barrels per day (mbd) and exporting 1.5mbd. According to reliable estimates, this means that, over the past four years, the Iraqi treasury has lost around $24.7bn of potential revenue. Presently, only 22 of the 87 known Iraqi fields are on stream.
The resistance shall prevail
It is clear that the Iraqi people are on the verge of a truly historic victory against the combined forces of the two most powerful imperialist countries – the US and Britain. No death squads, torture, mass raids, searches, arrests and curfews, no economic blockades or collective punishments, no attempts at inciting sectarian strife or ethnic cleansing, no aerial bombardments or indiscriminate shooting of civilians can prevent the defeat of the Anglo-American imperialist forces. While the star of the Iraqi resistance is rising, that of Bush and Blair is fading away.
The proletariat in the imperialist countries, especially in the US and Britain, must side with the victims of imperialism and give unstinting political support to the brave struggle of the Iraqi resistance to free its people from the predatory invaders occupying the country.
Victory to the Iraqi resistance!
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