Markin comment:
In 2007-2008 I, in vain,
attempted to put some energy into analyzing the blossoming American
presidential campaign since it was to be, as advertised at least, a watershed
election, for women, blacks, old white anglos, latinos, youth, etc. In the
event I had to abandon the efforts in about May of 2008 when it became obvious,
in my face obvious, that the election would be a watershed only for those who
really believed that it would be a watershed election. The four years of the
Obama presidency, the 2012 American presidential election campaign, and world
politics have only confirmed in my eyes that that abandonment was essentially
the right decision at the right time. In short, let the well- paid bourgeois
commentators go on and on with their twitter. I, we, had (have) better things
to do like fighting against the permanent wars, the permanent war economies,
the struggle for more and better jobs, and for a workers party that fights for
a workers government . More than enough to do, right? Still a look back at some
of the stuff I wrote then does not a bad feel to it. Read on if you like
************
A CHANGE OF
SLOGANS ON IRAQIMMEDIATE UNCONDITIONAL WITHDRAWAL OF ALL U.S. TROOPS-AND MERCENARIES! OUT WITH THE HESSIANS!
Seemingly it is impossible
for news coming out of Iraq in an average week to be anything but unrelentingly
macabre and mind-boggling. Case in point- Over the weekend of September 15,
2007 a shooting incident occurred resulting in at least several deaths and
injuries involving the 'private' security company Blackwater. Blackwater
provides ‘support services’ to many American governmental agencies, in this
case the U.S. State Department, in Iraq so initially the news seemed like just
one more case of these otherwise unemployable cowboys getting out of hand and
becoming panicky under ‘fire’. Needless to say Blackwater has denied all
responsibility (and liability) for their actions. Moreover, they argue, even if
things did get a little out of hand there may have been insurgents within a
hundred miles of their employer’s destination so creation of a ‘free-fire zone’
was an appropriate response. When I
first read the report I purposefully held off comment because I was not sure
which way the thing was heading, if any. Over the last several years there had
been occasional reports on the doings of these so-called wildcat ‘service
providers’. Now all hell has broken loose over the weekend shootings with the
Iraqi government threatening reprisals and suspensions of permits. What gives?
Those of us who oppose this
war, and particularly those of us who have fought it under the slogan of
immediate withdrawal of all troops from Iraq, have been following the bouncing
ball of timetables and ‘official’ troop drawdowns. In the meantime we have
either ignored or downplayed the role that mercenaries, and frankly while these
Blackwater agents and others may not satisfy that definition under
international law that is what they are, have played in the ‘shadow war’. These
are not nature’s noblemen (and women) but the dregs dragged from the hills of
Arkansas, Idaho and the retirement communities around military bases, among
others locales. Moreover, these people provide as much an ‘armed and dangerous’
threat to the Iraqi population as the ‘official’ troops. While the numbers are
somewhat in dispute ranging from 20,000 to 50,000 this is, in effect, a
parallel ‘unofficial’ very well paid American army. As the reports have
dribbled out of previously unreported (or underreported) incidents a number of
unidentified Iraqi civilians have alleged that they fear the ‘officials’ less
than these rogue elements. Nice, right?
It is not as though we have
not had our own experiences with these types. In the American Revolution we had
to face those damn Hessians that George III (as far as I know not related to
the current George, except politically in their joint fetishistic attachment to
the prerogatives of the divine right of kings) send over to roust the rustics.
By all reports the Hessians were the same kind of cutthroat hell-raisers as these
foreign legionnaires fortune who are strutting around in Iraq today. Well, what
does all this mean politically? Damn, as if we did not have enough to do in the
withdrawal fight we now have to get out the old posters and rewrite our slogan-
Immediate Withdrawal of All American Troops and Mercenaries from Iraq! Hessians Out! Oh yes, by the way it would not
be a bad idea to start subscripting to Soldier of Fortune magazine to see what
the cowboys are up to these days. Enough said.
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