The Socialist Alliance joined the hundreds of thousands of Australians who rallied against the war on Iraq last year. Now we are building demonstrations against the US occupation as events in Iraq of the past two weeks have shown the world the brutal reality of liberation, US-style. As the news about Fallujah reveals, the anti-war movement was right to oppose the war and right about the consequences of the invasion.
The US military responded to the killing of four mercenaries in the city of Fallujah by carrying out what can only be described as a massacre. At least 700 Fallujah residents have been killed by US forces, according to the director of Fallujah's main hospital.
The US did not dispute the figure, but claimed 95% of those killed were guerrillas. This is directly contradicted by reports from Al Jazeera, the only news agency present in Fallujah during the US assault, whose website describes civilian houses being bombed and whole families killed. The reports are accompanied by pictures of the corpses of small children killed by US bombs.
US tactics are so brutal they have been condemned by senior British military officers. An unnamed senior officer stationed in southern Iraq told reporters: "My view and the view of the British chain of command is that the Americans' use of violence is not proportionate and is over-responsive to the threat they are facing."
US officials insist that they are faced with hostility only from a small sector of Iraq's population. But the uprising in the predominantly Shiite cities of southern Iraq marked a turning point — what had been a guerrilla struggle relatively isolated from the majority of the population is now a fully fledged war of national liberation.
Support for this struggle extends well beyond the resistance fighters in Fallujah and Ramadi and the ranks of militant cleric Moqtada al Sadr's Mahdi Army.
Just as they did in the struggle against British imperialism in the 1950s, Iraq's Sunnis and Shiites are uniting against a common enemy. Sectarian divisions are being pushed into the background by the urgency of the struggle against the occupation.
In the slums of Sadr City in Baghdad, Shiite residents queued in their hundreds to donate blood and supplies to their Sunni counterparts in Fallujah, and thousands joined the aid convoy as it delivered its food and medical aid.
Many refugees fleeing Fallujah were given refuge in Shiite areas of Baghdad. In Fallujah, posters of Moqtada al Sadr
have appeared, while Sunni tribal leaders have sent delegations to meet with Sadr's aides in Baghdad.
One indication of the popular support for the Iraqi resistance is the almost complete disappearance of the US-trained Iraqi Army and police force. An entire battalion of Iraqi soldiers refused to join the US siege of Fallujah.
Every protest to the contrary by US officials only confirms how deeply the US elites are haunted by the spectre of the Vietnam War.
Their own commander on the ground in Fallujah, Lieutenant Colonel Brennan Byrne, told journalists the Fallujah siege "is like Hue city in Vietnam". Hue was the site of the fiercest street fighting during the 1968 Tet offensive.
Although the US military eventually crushed the Tet uprising, it was a turning point in the conflict. Afterwards it was clear that the US would never win the "battle for hearts and minds" of the Vietnamese.
Iraq's uprising — and the brutal response of the occupiers — is a similar marker, consigning to oblivion the final public justification the US government and its sycophants had for the invasion — that it was an act of liberation.
As the dreams of George Bush, Tony Blair and John Howard for a "New American Century" are consumed in the fires of Iraqi resistance, anti-war activists in Australia are stepping up our efforts to break the government from its support for the occupation.
The Socialist Alliance, which has staunchly opposed Bush's "war on terror" from the outset, is proud to be a key part of that movement.
Across the country, our members and supporters are taking up the demand to "Bring the troops home now!". We are organising protests, petition campaigns, public meetings and vigils wherever and whenever we can. And we are doing everything we can to convince Australian voters to drive Howard from office at the election later this year, and to consign Australia's part in this despicable imperial venture to history.
Jarvis Ryan
[The author is a member of the Socialist Alliance.]
From Green Left Weekly, April 21, 2004.
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