“Obama’s Promise”

By Haifa Zangana
March 2009

Mr Obama’s’ rhetorical promises on Iraq are nothing but a whitewash of the original neo-con agenda, hence the neocon praise. The schedule of withdrawal is as elastic and dependant on the ’situation on the ground’ as before, effectively allowing forms of occupation as indefinite as the defeated candidate, Senator MaCain wished it to be.

It is clear that the US has not abandoned its colonial project in Iraq, but only widened their variation of neo-colonial options, in response to their failed policies in fomenting open sectarian strife. They are after a smart occupation, on the line of smart sanctions on Iraq from 1998 that prepared for the occupation. They hope to augment and refresh the failed class of collaborators with new guises for the sectarian opportunist politicians now relabeled secular and nationalist in the election fanfare cycle. The US may give cramps of the spoils of Iraq to European powers who can help them, and to neighboring countries with regional ambitions and rivalries. They continue the policy of divide-and-rule of Iraqis and their local resistance movements, adding tribal and bureaucratic rivalries to an already unmanageable mess. But The Iraqi resistance continues, and the US casualties remain higher than Afghanistan, no matter what the media claims.

Two things are glaring missed out in Obama’s promise: a) admitting the culpability of the US occupation in destroying the Iraqi state, and in fragmenting society through sectarian constitution imposed by Bremer and, b) the absolute need to engage the legitimate Iraqi armed resistance as the main force for correction. The US claim to consider engaging the Taliban, why not the Iraqi resistance?

History shows that popular resistance to occupation will eventually win, regardless of the claims by occupiers about terrorism and barbarism. This was the case in Algeria, South Africa, Vietnam and in Northern Ireland. Those who prolong the suffering of the occupied nations not only bear the responsibility for mass-scale crimes and destruction, but also of the damage to the occupying nations themselves.