Iraqis Protest U.S. Airstrikes

On December 29 U.S. military aircraft bombed five sites connected to the Iraqi militia Kataib Hezbollah.   Three of the sites were in Iraq, and two were in Syria.  Twenty five people were killed by the strikes, and over 50 were injured.

Kataib Hezbollah is a Shite Iraqi militia that is politically allied to the Iranian regime.  According to a statement issued by the U.S. military, the targets that they chose were command center, weapons depots and bases of the militia.  The reasons the U.S. gave for the attacks was that they believed that the militia is behind a series of rocket attacks on U.S. bases in the region, and the killing of an American contractor.  However, if the U.S. seeks to justify its actions as a response to previous attacks, that is a argument it cannot win, since the very creation of the Kataib Hezbollah militia is in large part a response to the illegal and unjust U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Revolutionary socialists don’t give political support to Kataib Hezbollah.  After all, it is one of the violent, corrupt militias that Iraqis have been staging mass protests against since October.  We do support the right of Iraqis to oppose and fight back against the U.S. occupation of the country.  Despite the claims that the U.S. has withdrawn from there, the reality is that the U.S. still has 5,000 troops in the country, and continues to bully and blackmail the Iraqi government.

This very attack, for example, was a clear violation of Iraq’s sovereignty.  The U.S. government says that they notified the Prime Minister of Iraq half an hour before the air strikes took place.  However, the Iraqi government in no way asked for the strikes, or consented to them.  The Iraqi Prime Minister made clear their opposition to the planned attacks, but the U.S. went ahead with them anyway – demonstrating that the U.S. presence in Iraq has nothing to do with helping the people of Iraq, but rather is entirely about pursuing the bloody interests of imperialism.

On Dec. 31, following funerals for the 25 people who were killed in the U.S. air strikes, thousands of protesters pushed through the Green Zone’s security perimeter in Baghdad and began protesting just outside the U.S. embassy.  The embassy, which is the largest in the world, is well guarded.  Security responded to protesters by firing tear gas at them, which escalated things.  Protesters broke windows and threw rocks over the embassy walls.  The U.S. reacted by sending in 100 additional Marines, and sending two Apache attack helicopters to the scene.

Protests continued for a second day, on Jan. 1, outside the embassy, with U.S. forces firing more tear gas and rubber bullets at them.  After a lot of public pressure by the U.S. government against the Iraqi government, large numbers of Iraqi security personnel entered the area, and physically pushed the protesters out of the Green Zone.

In the media the U.S. is trying to portray itself as a victim him – that its airstrikes were a justified retaliation for previous attacks, and that its embassy should be sacred and off limits.  But the reality is the U.S. is the aggressor that has invaded, bombed and upended the lives of the Iraqi people.  The U.S. has no right to be there, and that its interests are those of Wall Street, and not the people of the region.  We demand that the U.S. stop its bombings, withdraw all of its forces from the Middle East, and respect the peoples of the region’s right to self-determination.

>> The article above was written by Adam Ritscher.