BY DOUG LORIMER
With Iraqi resistance fighters inflicting casualties on the US and British occupation troops almost daily, and with the US administration's justification for invading Iraq — its alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction — exposed as a deliberate lie, the US public's support for the war has declined substantially over the last few months.
In late April, the Washington Post's pollsters reported that 75% of those quizzed approved, and only 22% disapproved, of US President George Bush's handling of the situation in Iraq. However, according to the Post's latest poll, conducted on August 7-11 and reported in the paper's August 12 edition, 41% of Americans disapproved of Bush's handing of the situation in Iraq, while 56% approved. The poll found that 27% of Americans oppose the US military presence in Iraq, while only 46% declared themselves "strongly" in support.
The change in public opinion is beginning to be noticed by Democratic Party politicians, the big majority of whom backed Bush's invasion of Iraq. Leading Democratic presidential hopefuls Senator John Kerry and Representative Dick Gephardt — both voted in Congress to authorise the war on Iraq — have criticised Bush's handling of the occupation of Iraq. However, their criticisms remain completely within the framework of supporting the occupation, rather than allowing the Iraqi people to decide their own affairs free from US interference.
"If I were president ... I'd go to the UN right now and ask for a Security Council mandate so countries like India and Russia and France and Germany will join us", Gephardt said in a speech in San Francisco in early August. Kerry made the same pitch: "Lives are at stake. We need to internationalise this, and we need to do it now."
Responding to a White House report, "Results in Iraq: 100 Days Toward Security and Freedom", issued on August 8 — 100 days after Bush stood beneath a "Mission Accomplished" banner on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln and declared on May 1 that major combat operations were completed — Kerry said that the "best way to win the peace [meaning the war] ... is to replace Americans with a broad array of troops that take the target off of American soldiers and eliminate the sense of American occupation".
Armed resistance
Between the time Bush made his statement on the Abraham Lincoln, and the issuing of the "100 Days" report, 119 US soldiers have been killed in Iraq — two more than between the beginning of the US invasion of Iraq (March 20) and the entry of US troops into Baghdad (April 9).
While the White House has dismissed the Iraqis' armed resistance as the actions of isolated "Saddam loyalists", the two days of rioting against British troops in the southern Iraqi city of Basra on August 9-10 demonstrated that there is widespread Iraqi hostility to the occupation even in anti-Baathist areas. Basra was the epicentre of the Shiite Muslim uprising against Hussein's regime in 1991.
In the wake of the Basra riots, Ghassan Salameh, adviser to UN special representative to Iraq Sergio Vieira de Mello, told the French weekly Le Nouvel Observateur on August 13 that leading Iraqis who despised Hussein will take up arms against US and British troops if life under the US occupation does not quickly improve.
"Many influential Iraqis who initially felt liberated from a despised regime have assured me that they will take up arms if the Coalition troops do not arrive at a result", Salameh said.
Bush has dismissed Gephardt's and Kerry's calls for a UN "peacekeeper" force to be added to the US occupation army as "pure politics". However, their calls reflect a growing concern within the US capitalist ruling class and its policy advisers of the need to find a way to minimise US casualties in Iraq, while suppressing Iraqi opposition to the US takeover of their country and its vast oil resources.
The Bush administration has attempted to do this by persuading a range of countries to commit troops to Iraq. By early August, the White House was boasting that it had commitments from 30 countries to send up to 30,000 troops.
However, Joseph Biden, the leading Democrat on the Senate foreign relations committee, noted that even 30,000 foreign troops would not be enough to relieve the strain on US troops. The US military is trained for high-tech, blitzkrieg-style invasions of weakly defended Third World countries, not for prolonged colonial-style policing of hostile populations.
'Help needed'
According to the August 2 Washington Post, Biden said the Bush administration's refusal to seek a new UN resolution mandating the creation of a UN "peacekeeping" force had cost it as many as 45,000 additional troops from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Germany and France.
It has since been revealed that, while up to 30 countries have agreed to send troops to Iraq, the total number does not exceed 15,500 — most of these will not be combat soldiers.
On August 9, Richard Lugar, the Republican chairperson of the US Senate foreign relations committee, joined those calling for a new UN resolution to get more countries to send troops to Iraq.
"We really do need help from other countries", Lugar told NBC's Meet the Press program. "It is regrettable that some countries still believe that this is our mission entirely. And the UN legitimacy, and reaching out to these other countries, is of the essence, not only in the short term, but in the intermediate term."
Lugar said the war in Iraq was not over and that a UN resolution calling for other countries to contribute troops would "give us more legitimacy" in fighting the war.
Bush administration officials have indicated they are willing to support a new UN resolution that gives other countries more "legal cover" to send their troops to Iraq — provided it does not put any limitations on the control that Washington's viceroy Paul Bremer and his Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) exercises over the construction of a pro-US puppet regime in Iraq.
As a step towards achieving this, Washington renewed its push for the UN Security Council to recognise Bremer's handpicked 25-member Governing Council as the embryo of a post-Hussein Iraqi government.
UN 'welcomes' US puppet
On August 13, Washington presented a draft resolution to the UN Security Council which "welcomes the establishment of the broadly representative Governing Council of Iraq on July 13, 2003, as an important step towards the formation by the people of Iraq of an internationally recognised, representative government that will exercise the sovereignty of Iraq".
Prior to the vote on the resolution on August 14, UN officials told Associated Press that the draft resolution had been accepted by the three permanent members of the Security Council — France, Russia and China — which had previously voiced opposition to the US-British invasion of Iraq.
As a trade-off for their endorsement of the Governing Council, Washington agreed to include in the resolution authorisation for the establishment of a UN Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI).
Under resolution 1483, adopted on May 22, the Security Council recognised the US and Britain as the "occupying authority" in Iraq, and authorised UN secretary-general Koffi Annan to appoint a special UN representative to work with the Anglo-US CPA.
Washington had previously opposed proposals from Paris and Moscow for the setting up of a broader UN mission in Iraq, arguing that the CPA and its puppet Governing Council were sufficient to direct the construction of a new Iraqi regime.
The UNAMI authorised by the new resolution might give Paris and Moscow, via de Mello, greater influence in shaping the composition of a new Iraqi regime. The Bush administration, however, appears to be comfortable with giving de Mello more influence in the construction of a post-Hussein regime because he has demonstrated a willingness to support Bremer's puppet Governing Council.
De Mello told the Security Council last month: "We now have an institution that, while not democratically elected, can be viewed as broadly representative of the various constituencies in Iraq. It means that we now have a formal body of senior and distinguished Iraqi counterparts, with credibility and authority, with whom we can chart the way forward."
The resolution — approved by the 15-member Security Council 14-0 on August 14 (Arab League member Syria abstained) — does not meet the demands for giving the UN a greater role enforcing "security" and supervising "reconstruction" in Iraq sought by France, Germany, Pakistan and India as a condition for sending combat troops there.
"You can make a case that it would be better to do that, but, right now, the situation in Iraq is not that dire", an unnamed US official told the August 13 New York Times.
"The Bush administration has been reluctant to give the UN more than minimal authority in the reconstruction of Iraq", the NYT article noted, adding: " Many administration members say that France, Germany, Russia and other countries demanding such a role are actually doing so to try to get more contracts and economic benefits for themselves."
In an August 13 report aired by the US Congress-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty network, Edward Luck, director of Columbia University's Centre for International Organisation, argued that the new UN resolution would provide political cover for countries that opposed the US invasion of Iraq to contribute combat troops to the US-led occupation.
"Because of all the controversies and because relatively few member states supported the military intervention, they need for their domestic publics this kind of extra legitimacy from the UN", Luck said. "But they also need it so they can say in the end that they're not doing it just at US bidding, that they're not being pushed around by the US but, in fact, they're doing it on behalf of the international community as a whole."
From Green Left Weekly, August 20, 2003.
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