Vol. 71/No. 6      February 12, 2007

Many of the 21,500 additional troops the U.S. government is sending to Iraq are already in place, and Petraeus indicated that he may request more soldiers. U.S. troops, in fact, began deploying immediately after U.S. president George Bush announced January 10 the largest troop increase since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of the country. At a January 26 Pentagon briefing, defense secretary Robert Gates said he will work to accelerate the new troop deployments.

U.S. forces are already engaging Shiite and Sunni militias Washington considers obstacles to its drive to establishing a stable capitalist regime in Baghdad subservient to U.S. imperialist interests in the region. At least 250 members of a Shiite militia were killed January 28 in a 15-hour battle with U.S. troops and Iraqi government forces near Najaf in southern Iraq.

Meanwhile, a delegation of Democratic and Republican members of Congress, headed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, called on NATO to increase its troops in Afghanistan. The delegation had just returned from a visit to Kabul.

"The situation in Iraq has deteriorated significantly since the bombing this past February of the Al-Askari mosque in Samarra, the third-holiest Shi'a Islamic shrine," Petraeus said January 23 in his opening statement to the Senate Armed Services Committee. "In this environment, Iraq's new government, its fourth in three and a half years, has found it difficult to gain traction."

The general said U.S. troops will now act regardless of what Iraqi government forces do. Iraqi troops would be "kept in the lead" whenever possible, he said, or "at arm's length when that is not possible."

The general cautioned that the war will be long. "It will take time for the additional forces to flow to Iraq, time for them to gain an understanding of the areas in which they will operate, time to plan with and get to know their Iraqi partners, time to set conditions for the successful conduct of security operations, and of course time to conduct those operations and they to build on what they achieve," he said. "In fact, the way ahead will be neither quick nor easy."

Petraeus said he applauds Bush's recent announcement to increase the overall number of Army troops and Marines by nearly 100,000. "Our ongoing endeavors in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere are people-intensive, and it is heartening to know that there will be more soldiers and Marines to shoulder the load," he said.

During his testimony, Petraeus and Senator Carl Levin, a Democrat from Michigan, referred to "ethnic slaughter" and "ethnic militias." Sectarian groups, Petraeus said, would "try to expand their turf. They would do that by greatly increasing ethnic cleansing."

On January 26, the Senate voted 81-0 to confirm Petraeus.

At a Capitol Hill press conference four days later, Pelosi became the latest in a string of Democrats and Republicans critical of the White House to call for increasing the number of imperialist troops in Afghanistan (see also article on p. 2.)

Commenting on the lack of any serious alternative in the ruling class to the White House escalation of the war in Iraq, a January 30 Investor's Business Daily column on a nonbinding resolution approved by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said, "What the resolution tells us is that most members of Congress … yearn to return to the holiday from history that we thought we were enjoying between the fall of the Berlin Wall and Sept. 11, 2001. And that they have no idea at all of how to get there."

Some 34,000 Iraqi civilians were killed last year, largely as a result of factional fighting.

The polarizing impact of the fighting was captured in a January 28 New York Times Week in Review feature. Sabrina Tavernise, who has spent 22 months in Iraq, wrote that a year ago her interviews were peppered with phrases like "Iraqis are all brothers." Those she interviewed would get angry when asked their religious sect. "Now some of them introduce themselves that way," she said.

After describing the results of the bloodletting, Tavernise noted, "For those eager to write off Iraq as lost, one fact bears remembering. A great many Shiites and Kurds, who together make up 80 percent of the population, will tell you that in spite of all the mistakes the Americans have made here, the single act of removing Saddam Hussein was worth it. And the new American plan, despite all the obstacles, may have a chance to work."

She said this view is not shared by officials of the government headed by Iraqi premier Nouri Kamal al-Maliki. "When American officials were debating whether to send more troops in December, I went to see an Iraqi government official. The prospect of more troops infuriated him. More Americans would simply prolong the war, he said. 'If you don't allow the minority to lose, you will carry on forever,' he said." A young Shiite in Sadr City told Tavernise, "This just has to burn itself out."

Meanwhile, the deployment of additional troops is going full steam ahead. Members of the 82nd Airborne Division arrived in Iraq January 12. With one month's notice, extra food and supplies, expanded motor pools, and new quarters had been built at forward operating bases on the edge of Sadr City, a stronghold of Muqtada Al-Sadr's Shiite militia, a major target of the U.S. military escalation.

A battalion of the 6th Marines from Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, deployed January 25. Tours of duty have been extended for a number of Marine units operating in the Anbar province. Another Marine unit left Lejeune in early January.

These forces are being increasingly drawn into combat. U.S. ground troops, F-16 fighter planes, and Apache helicopters had to be called in on January 29 as Iraqi troops were initially overwhelmed in fighting the Soldiers of Heaven, a Shiite militia in Najaf.

The governor of the province said the militia had planned to attack Shiite clerics and convoys en route to Najaf during the Ashura holiday. Among those to be targeted was Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's top Shiite cleric. Saddam Hussein's regime helped finance Soldiers of Heaven in the 1990s to counter Sistani's influence.

Shiites, a majority in Iraq, along with the Kurds, an oppressed nationality, faced widespread discrimination under the Hussein regime, which was based among a minority of wealthy Sunnis.
 
 
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