More than 35 years after Washington launched its first assault on Iraq — a war that announced today’s sharpening imperialist conflicts and the opening guns of World War III — the Pentagon is pulling out its remaining troops.
Despite two wars under both Republican and Democratic presidents, the overthrow of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, and the death of more than 4,400 U.S. soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi soldiers and civilians, the U.S. rulers were never able to turn Iraq into a U.S. protectorate, much less use the wars as the beginning of a new world order, as they insisted was their goal.
U.S. imperialism did succeed in advancing its plunder of the oil, gas and other resources of the region, and pushing back its competitors. At the same time, the U.S. intervention accelerated economic and political crises and breakdowns in the region and worldwide.
Washington used its massive military superiority to defeat Saddam’s 1990 predatory invasion of Kuwait. After six weeks of incessant U.S. bombardment and a murderous 100-hour invasion that began Feb. 24, 1991, tens of thousands of demoralized Iraqi soldiers fled Kuwait — putting up no resistance — along with civilians and immigrant workers.
Demonstrating U.S. imperialism’s ruthlessness, its armed forces bombed one end of the road from Kuwait City to Basra in Iraq and then the other, trapping and slaughtering the fleeing soldiers and civilians.
Having defeated the Iraqi army and with few losses on their side, the U.S. rulers decided not to occupy Iraq, leaving Saddam in power to crush rebellions by the Kurds in the north and Shiites in the south. By April 1991 the last U.S. troops had withdrawn.
Washington deals blows to rivals
This assault “was the first of Washington’s wars since World War II in which it sought to use its military might to deal blows, indirect but palpable, to U.S. imperialism’s rivals, especially in Bonn, Tokyo and Paris,” explained Socialist Workers Party National Secretary Jack Barnes. It marked the most far-reaching shift in Washington’s military policy and organization since the late 1930s.
London enthusiastically, and Paris reluctantly, joined the U.S. war, while Berlin and Tokyo stood aside.
Washington invaded Iraq again in March 2003, on the pretext that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. This time Washington could only cobble together an even narrower “coalition of the willing,” still more than enough to overthrow Saddam.
But establishing a stable pro-U.S. regime proved impossible. The U.S. occupation unleashed uncontrollable forces among competing bourgeois forces within Iraq where some 54% are Shiite Arabs, 14% Sunni Arabs, 18% Kurds, with several other smaller nationalities.
Shiite-based militias — often backed by Tehran — began challenging the U.S. forces. Former members of Saddam’s Sunni-based capitalist dictatorship joined with al-Qaeda in challenging both the new predominantly Shiite government and the U.S. occupation.
In northern Iraq the oppressed Kurdish nationality stepped up its fight for national rights, winning control over an autonomous region.
In December 2005 conflicts between the Shiite-based bourgeois government and various Shiite and Sunni factions sharply accelerated.
Then in January 2007 President George W. Bush sent 30,000 more troops in an attempt to stabilize the country. U.S. forces had pushed al-Qaeda back by September 2008, handing control of its key strongholds to the Iraqi government. In December 2011 the last U.S. troops pulled out.
But in 2013 a new, Sunni-based, insurgency erupted, led by Islamic State, aided by former members of the Saddam regime.
Islamic State inflicted a reign of terror on people in the areas it controlled, seizing some 40% of the country by 2014. President Barack Obama ordered U.S. troops in later that year.
For several years a heterogeneous coalition of Iraqi government forces, Kurdish groups, U.S. special forces and Tehran-backed groups — all aided by U.S. air cover — fought pitched battles against Islamic State. Tehran took advantage of the fighting to greatly expand the militias it backed and its influence in Iraq.
By 2018 Islamic State had been defeated. While Washington reduced its military presence, for years it maintained some 2,500 U.S. soldiers, mostly at a base near Erbil in the Kurdish region.
President Donald Trump says that the U.S. troops are no longer needed and that Washington has good relations with Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi, despite Tehran using its proxy forces in Iraq to launch drone and missile strikes at Israel and Arab countries in the region.
Al-Zaidi, who has tried to balance between the pressure from Tehran and Washington, called on the Iranian-backed militias — which have dozens of seats in Iraq’s parliament — to hand over their weapons to the government. No one believes that’s likely.
‘Anxiety and uncertainty’
The Kurdish Regional Government viewed the U.S. troops as protection from threats by the Iraqi government and Tehran, which both oppose Kurdish national rights. The absence of U.S. troops, “creates a sense of anxiety and uncertainty,” Kifah Mahmoud, an adviser to Kurdish leader Masoud Barzani, said.
U.S. imperialism remains the most powerful military force in the region, embroiled in conflict with the capitalist rulers in Iran. The Pentagon sent a third aircraft carrier and thousands of additional troops to the Middle East in early October, maintaining its blockade on Iranian ports.
The regime in Iraq has made some progress in stabilizing the country. The New York Times reports that “blast walls that once snaked through Baghdad have come down. Malls, restaurants and construction sites” are buzzing once again.
Numerous articles in the U.S. bourgeois press express the fear that with U.S. troops gone, Tehran will advance its power in Iraq.
But none of these commentators point to the most important unintended consequence of the wars — the space that opened up for the working class, peasants, women and oppressed nationalities to organize and fight to advance their own interests. In 2019 mass protests for jobs and political rights brought down the government of Prime Minister Abdel Abdul-Mahdi. More struggles lie ahead.