Iraq: bayonets, bullets and votes

BY JUAN DUFFLAR AMEL—Special for Granma International—

THE fictitious "American dream" of a world of peace, liberty, democracy, and universal suffrage does not apply to Iraq, a country invaded, occupied, and devastated by the war machinery and troops of the United States. Washington’s aim of legitimizing through "general elections" a genocide that has cost the lives of over 100,000 Iraqi civilians and destroyed millenary cultural, historical and religious values is not only a crime against humanity but also an insult to universal intelligence.

Elections have been convened for January 30 by a spurious government lacking authority or popular support, but appointed by the White House and led by a puppet-prime minister, Iyad Allawi, backed up by his long career in the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

War media experts, under the direction of the US intelligence services and the Pentagon, are utilizing unspeakable means to convince the international community and public opinion in their own country that a suitable climate of political stability and pacification prevails in Iraq for the organization of general elections so that Iraqi citizens can elect a constitutional government. Nothing could be more perverse and absurd.

President George W. Bush initiated his second mandate at the White House by ordering operation Phantom Fury, the final attack on the martyred Sunni city of Falluja, in order to "facilitate" the right to vote.

In response to their master’s voice, a ferocious pack of 10,000 US soldiers and 2,000 Iraqis were launched themselves on that rebel bastion, protected by the martial law decreed by the servile Allawi, who gave them a license to kill.

The atrocious butchery perpetrated by US assault troops in Falluja after a 10-week siege; the indiscriminate bombardments of warplanes, tanks, and mortars; the vile massacre of wounded prisoners, finished off at close range; and the almost total destruction of the city have not succeeded in forcing the surrender of resistance combatants who, in the midst of smoking ruins, continue fighting face to face and house by house against an enemy one hundred times stronger.

Like Guernica, Lidice, Son My, and My Lai, Falluja is a martyred city, but at the same time it has become the symbol of the people's rejection of the foreign invader. Falluja will always be remembered for its patriotic fighters’ courage and boldness.

Although the United States applied a scorched-earth policy in Falluja, like the lava from an erupting volcano, the insurgency has extended throughout the entire Iraqi geography.

Mosul, Ramada, Baquba, Kerbala, Balad, Kirkuk, Baiji, Samarra and other cities are the scenario of confrontations with the US troops and their allies, while downtown Baghdad is daily shaken by by car-bomb explosions and attacks by suicide commandos, and oil and gas pipelines are being set alight in rebel sabotage acts.

The U.S. government is paying a high cost in human lives, and at an economic and political level in a war that is viewed as a strategic error and one, for many analysts and observers, that has already been lost.

Since May 1, 2003, when Bush announced the end of the large-scale military operations in Iraq, more than 1, 200 US soldiers have died in action and a further 10,000 have been wounded or mutilated. The cost of the invasion and occupation of this Arab nation are in the range of billions of dollars.

It is in the midst of this tragic panorama of death, desolation, extreme violence and civilian insecurity that the White House has convened – via its local puppets – the holding of elections "without excuses or pretexts."

Nevertheless, the non-viability of a popular consultation in the midst of this chaos has been appreciated by 15 Iraqi political parties, including the one led by Allawi, and they have called for the a six-month postponement, given the "insecurity, suicide attacks, and insufficient technical, political, and administrative preparations."

But at Washington’s orders, the interim government’s request has been denied, as Bush has already given his instructions, affirming that the electoral commission has established that elections should be held in January, and he expects them to be held in January.

It is worth noting that the electoral commission is only the product of a "homemade constitution," hastily cooked up last March without a plebiscite or a referendum.

If the elections do go ahead, they will be guarded by US boots, bullets, and bayonets, as in order to "guarantee" Iraqi citizens’ votes, Donald Rumsfeld, the US secretary of defense, has promised to send in another 40,000 soldiers to that suffering Arab nation.

It is here were the calculations of the U.S. president and other hawks fall down.