THE imperialists and their Chinese and Russian stooges on the UN Security Council have extended the mandate of the US-led occupation armies in Iraq, after a plea from the Iraqi puppet Foreign Minister, Zebari.
He said that the regime established by the US-organised January 30th ‘general elections’ would be unable to cope if US forces returned home at the end of the original mandate, at the beginning of 2006.
In a unanimously approved statement, the council deplored the insurgency, and re-emphasised earlier calls to member states to prevent the transit of ‘terrorists’ into Iraq as well as the flow of arms and money to sustain them.
During his speech to the council Zebari said that the US military stay should be open ended, until Iraqi forces were ready to do the job themselves.
Zebari’s panic appeal to the Security Council, and his declared fears of an early departure by US forces, have a basis in fact.
This is that imperialist and puppet expectations that the holding of the fake elections on January 30th would lead to an undermining of the nationalist insurgency have proven to be wishful thinking.
In the month of May, 77 US troops were killed in Iraq, the highest total since the 30 days before the January elections, when the struggle for Fallujah was taking place.
Many of the 77 were killed in heavy fighting in western Iraq where US offensives met well organised and intense opposition, of a kind that had not been expected. US officers reported that they had met Iraqi fighters in uniform fighting from well prepared positions and with a high degree of professionalism.
In the same month, hundreds of puppet forces were killed. The month of May saw the hopes of the US military and its supporters brought down to earth with a crash.
‘Those who believed that the elections would be a decisive turning point undermining the insurgency are disappointed yet again,’ Cato Institute defence analyst Ted Carpenter commented.
He added: ‘The insurgency seems as capable as ever’, and Iraq remains an ‘uncertain project’ for the United States.
‘The reality is we have discovered, despite all our propaganda, that we are facing a very tough, resilient and smart adversary’, said Daniel Goure, the defence analyst of the Lexington Institute.
Openly defeatist positions have begun to emerge amongst high-ranking US officers.
Lieutenant Colonel Steve Boylan, a US military spokesman in Baghdad, said on Monday that anti-US fighters were staging about 70 attacks across Iraq per day.
Boylan stated: ‘If we get too impatient and decide to throw in the towel too soon, then we give up everything we have gained up to this point.’ Hardly an expression of invincible imperialist power.
There is, however, another school of thought at work. This is that the way to win the war is to take out Syria, allegedly a base for Iraqi operations.
This was the line that was implicitly peddled at the UN Security Council meeting by Zebari. Throwing in the towel would after all see the puppets put up against a wall.
Zebari told the council that Syria had to do more to stop foreign extremists crossing into Iraq. He added that Syria was one of their main transit routes.
His remarks were denounced by the Syrian Defence Minister Hassan Turkmani as ‘false accusations instigated by enemies’. They are indeed attempts to spread the war into Syria.
The British trade unions must come to the assistance of the Iraqi people and bring an end to the illegal imperialist war and occupation, and the attempts to spread the war into Syria.
The British government has just sent hundreds more British troops into Iraq.
The trade unions must reply to this by taking action to bring down the Blair government, to go forward to a workers’ government that will withdraw all British troops from Iraq at once, and put the criminals responsible for the war on trial.
