Commentary

The U.S. Must Get Out of Iraq

On June 30 the formal transfer of sovereignty from the U.S. military to the Iraqi Interim Government is slated to take place. According to the Bush administration, that act will end the U.S.-British occupation of Iraq and Iraqis will once again become master of their own house. However, the issue of sovereignty is not primarily an issue of formalities, but an issue of realities.

Sovereignty is a matter of who has the ability to make the fundamental decisions affecting the life of a country and a people; it is a matter of who possesses political power. The Constitution of the United States formally states that sovereignty rests with the American people. The reality is that the American people are not and have never been a sovereign people; political power in the U.S. has always been in the hands of the wealthy elite. In Canada, formal sovereignty rests with the Queen of England, but it would be silly to suggest that the Queen has any real decision-making power in Canada. Here, as in the U.S., real political power is in the hands of the wealthy elite. Furthermore, because of Canada's political and economic subordination to U.S. imperialism, sovereignty in Canada is often exercised by the same individuals who exercise sovereignty in the United States.

In Iraq the issue of who will exercise real sovereignty after the June 30 transfer has become the central issue in Iraqi political life. It is not much of a secret that the Iraqi Interim Government will have no power to make any fundamental decisions on the future of Iraq. The Bush administration has stated that this would be undemocratic, since the Iraqi Interim Government has not been elected by the Iraqi people. The implication is that when a new government is elected in Iraq some time next year, it will have such fundamental decision-making powers. However, nothing could be further from the truth.

During the period leading up to the transfer of sovereignty, the U.S. has been systematically placing American personnel in all of the key positions within the state apparatus. They will remain in those positions for several years and will not be subject to removal by the newly-elected Iraqi government. In addition, the U.S. is building 14 permanent military bases on Iraqi soil and some U.S. officials have openly stated that U.S. troops may remain in Iraq for decades, just as they did in Germany, Japan, Korea and other countries after the Second World War. In addition, the U.S. is currently "negotiating" immunity from prosecution for its armed forces personnel, meaning that neither the Interim Government nor any future Iraqi government would have the authority to prosecute American soldiers who commit crimes against Iraqi citizens. In other words, regardless of various formalities or UN declarations, real sovereignty in Iraq will remain in the hands of the U.S. for the foreseeable future, and, regardless of what they call it, the U.S. military occupation of the country will continue.

It is clear that if anyone in the world is fooled by the declarations of the Bush administration about the occupation coming to an end on June 30, it is certainly not the Iraqi people. In the days preceding the "transfer", the struggle against the U.S. occupation and against Iraqi collaborators has escalated. Despite an attempt by the media to create the impression that the insurgency is the work of foreign terrorists, armed struggle against the occupation is going on throughout the country. In the days following the "transfer", as the Interim Government exposes through its actions that it is powerless and that the real power is still the U.S. military, the struggle against the occupation will further deepen and broaden. It will end only when the U.S. withdraws its troops from Iraq and the Iraqi people are free to decide for themselves the future of their nation.