Peter Symonds
Da due articoli del NYT 16/17 agosto, su riunione privata al
vertice (Bush+ gabinetto di guerra ed esperti esterni) su strategia americana
per Irak:
-
Art. del 16, tra le righe si parla di giorni
contati per il governo di al-Maliki se non attiene alle direttive del governo americano. -
Insoddisfazione per il nuovo governo iracheno di
Maliki; Iracheni non hanno apprezzato sacrifici americani; come ha fato a riuscire
la grande manifestazione anti-americana, con 100 000 partecipanti, del 4
agosto di Baghdad in appoggio ad Hezbollah? -
Lo scorso mese Maliki aveva pubblicamente
condannato l’invasione israeliana in Libano. -
art. 17 ag.: riprende rapporto del ministero
Difesa USA sulla recrudescenza dell’insurrezione, con maggior appoggio popolare; -
conclude tra le righe che un membro del
Pentagono o dei partecipante all’incontro ha ammesso che l’Amministrazione americana sta già
cominciando a pianificare l’era post-Maliki; -
un
non meglio identificato esperto militare al NYT: «Alti funzionari dell’Amministrazione
mi hanno fatto sapere che stanno pensando ad alternative diverse dalla democrazia». -
ll
calcolo americano che il governo di unità nazionale di Maliki avrebbe domato la
resistenza anti-americana e evitato la guerra civile si è dimostrato errato. -
Anziché
diminuire il loro impegno in Irak, gli USA sono costretti a mantenere il loro
contingente e anzi inviare altri soldati per riconquistare Baghdad. -
Con
le elezioni del Congresso in vista, i Repubblicani temono di essere indeboliti dall’allargamento
negli USA del movimento contro la guerra. -
Washington
Post, 29 luglio, riprende avvertimenti di un importante politico sciita, Hadi
al-Amiri, su «voci» che parlavano di abbattere la coalizione di Maliki e sostituirla
con «un governo di salvezza nazionale». Il che significherebbe «cancellare
la costituzione, cancellare i risultati delle elezioni e tornare al punto di
partenza… e noi non lo accetteremo».
WSWS: Il che significa = rimuovere al-Maliki, istituire un
regime più acquiescente alle direttive USA.
-
Non sarebbe la prima volta che gli USA spodestano uno dei
loro burattini: 1963, crisi strategia americana in Vietnam, l’Amministrazione
Kennedy da il via libera ad un putsch militare contro il presidente del Sud
Vietnam Ngo Dinh Diem .
La forma “democratica” è sempre stato un inganno, già dall’invasione
nel 2003 i funzionari americani sono intervenuti direttamente nelle questioni
costituzionali, nella formazione dei gabinetti… Maliki stesso è stato nominato
dopo che con una lunga campagna gli USA sono riusciti a allontanare Ibrahim
al-Jafaari.
Wsws 06-08-22
Is the
US planning a coup in Iraq?
By Peter Symonds
On
August 16, an extraordinary article appeared in the New York Times providing
details of a top-level private meeting on US
strategy in Iraq
at the Pentagon last week. President Bush, who was
present along with his war cabinet and selected “outside experts”, voiced his open dissatisfaction that
the new Iraqi government—and the Iraqi people—had not shown greater support for
US policies.
“More generally, the participants said, the
president expressed frustration that the Iraqis had not come to appreciate the
sacrifices the United States had made in Iraq, and
– was puzzled as to how a
recent anti-American rally in support of Hezbollah in Baghdad could draw such a large crowd,” the newspaper reported. The angry protest on August 4 against the US-backed Israeli war in Lebanon
drew more than 100,000 people from the capital and other Iraqi cities.
– The New York Times
article, which had all the hallmarks of a planted story, did not of course
speak openly of a coup against Maliki. Nevertheless it constituted an
unmistakable threat to the Baghdad regime that
its days were numbered if it did not toe the US line.
– Prior to his trip to Washington
last month, Maliki publicly condemned the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. While
his comments were just a pale reflection of popular sentiment in Iraq and throughout the Middle East, they soured
the Bush administration’s plans to use the visit as a much-needed boost prior
to mid-term US
elections.
The
New York Times followed up the report with a further article on August 17 on
the latest Defence Department indices of the
catastrophe in Iraq:
the number of roadside bombs
aimed mainly against American forces reached an all-time high of 2,625 in July
as compared to 1,454 in January. “The insurgency has gotten worse by almost all measures,
with insurgent attacks at historically high levels. The insurgency has more
public support and is demonstrably more capable in numbers of people active and
in its ability to direct violence than at any point in time,” a senior Defence
Department official told the newspaper.
– Buried at the conclusion of the article, however, was the
astonishing admission by one
of the participants in the Pentagon meeting that Bush administration officials
were already beginning to plan for a post-Maliki era.
– “Senior administration officials have acknowledged to me that they
are considering alternatives other than democracy,” an unnamed military affairs
expert told the New York Times. “Everybody in the administration is being quite
circumspect, but you can sense their own concern that this is drifting away
from democracy.”
The Bush administration’s attempts to dress up
its illegal occupation of Iraq
as “democratic” have always been a fraud. Ever since the 2003 invasion, US
officials have had a direct hand in drawing up constitutional arrangements,
steering elections and forming cabinets. Maliki was only installed as prime
minister in May after a
protracted White House campaign to force his predecessor Ibrahim al-Jaafari to
stand aside. To speak
of “considering alternatives other than democracy” can only have one
meaning—that the Bush administration is contemplating plans to ditch the
constitution, remove Maliki and insert a regime more directly amenable to Washington’s orders.
This would not be the first time that US imperialism has ousted
one of its own puppets.
– In 1963, as American
strategy in Vietnam
was floundering, the Kennedy administration gave the green light to army
plotters to overthrow South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem. While loyal to Washington,
Diem’s autocratic methods had provoked popular opposition and undermined US
efforts to strengthen the South Vietnamese army in its war against the National
Liberation Front.
– On November 1, 1963, rebel army units mutinied and marched on the
presidential palace in Saigon. Diem, who had
escaped, rang the US ambassador
Henry Cabot Lodge, who assured the Vietnamese president that the US had no hand
in the coup and expressed concern for his safety. A few hours later, the
reassured Diem surrendered, only to be shot dead along with his notorious brother
Ngo Dinh Nhu, and replaced by a military junta.
– The Bush administration
has plenty of reasons to get rid of Maliki. In launching its invasion of Iraq, Washington
never wanted an independent or democratic government in Baghdad. Its aims
were to transform the country into a pliable client state that would function
as a base of operations to further its designs throughout the region,
particularly against Iran.
But the White House has become increasingly dissatisfied with the political
results of its military adventure. Because of its own disastrous
miscalculations it has been forced to rely on a coalition government dominated
by Shiite parties with longstanding connections to Tehran.
– Inside Iraq,
the Bush administration’s
calculations that Maliki’s “government of national unity” would quell
anti-American resistance and halt the descent into civil war have already
proven worthless.
– Far from scaling back,
the Pentagon has had to maintain troop levels and dispatch thousands of extra
soldiers to Baghdad
in a desperate effort to reconquer the capital.
– With Congressional elections looming, the defeat of the pro-war
senator Joseph Lieberman in the Democratic Party primary on August 8 raised
fears in the White House that widespread antiwar sentiment would decimate the
Republican Party at the polls amid US debacles in Iraq,
Afghanistan and the Middle East as a whole.
The removal of Maliki and the imposition of a
subservient military regime would, at least in the short term, solve a few of
the Bush administration’s political problems by removing any objections in
Baghdad to a ruthless crackdown in the country and to US plans for new
provocations against Iran and Syria.
Significantly, the New York Times’ accounts of
discussions in the White House and Pentagon have been paralleled in Baghdad by persistent
rumours of a coup. On July 29,
the Washington Post reported the remarks of prominent Shiite politician Hadi
al-Amiri, who warned that “some tongues” were talking about toppling the Maliki
coalition and replacing it with a “national salvation government”. It would mean, he said, “cancelling
the constitution, cancelling the results of the elections and going back to
square one… and we will not accept that.”
Having pursued a policy of reckless militarism
in the Middle East for the past five years,
the Bush administration is more than capable of toppling an Iraqi regime that
no longer suits its immediate purposes. However, far from stabilising the
American occupation, a coup in Baghdad
would no more extricate the White House from its political crisis than the
ousting of Diem did in 1963. As in Vietnam,
the US is sinking deeper and
deeper into a political and military quagmire in Iraq.
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