BEYOND HOLLYWOOD

War Weariness in the USA

By Werner Pirker

[This article published in: Junge Welt, 11/24/2005 is translated from the German on the World Wide Web, http://www.jungewelt.de/2005/11-24/002.php.]




The population in the US is increasingly weary of the war in Iraq. According to a public opinion poll, 63 percent of the citizens want US troops withdrawn from Iraq in 2006 and 44 percent of the interviewed think the Iraq rebels will get the upper hand in the long run. Only 41% back the forces recruited by the occupiers.

The home front erodes. The nation was promised a different war course, a glorious war with as few of its own casualties as possible. Those who died for freedom should be material for heroic American epics. However the success story ended with the fall of Baghdad. Hollywood scenes cannot be set up in Iraqi reality. The oppressed people are not acting like a liberated people. The liberator myth of the conquerors was destroyed. Those subject to their liberation dictate sense this in the phosphorus bombs on Falludscha and cruel torture procedures. This has also shaken the nation that as the good pretends to be alien to everything evil. No “American hero” appears as far as the eye can see who can reestablish American self-esteem.

The Bush administration now tries to control the defeatist mood. Spreading the false hope that the Iraqi marionette government and its armed forces could soon take responsibility for “democracy and stability” in the land, US Secretary of State Rice envisions a drastic troop reduction for the next six months. She thinks the Iraqi security forces will be capable of assuming the tasks of the US troops more and more. If the Iraqi government desires a withdrawal of the Americans, she commented ambiguously, that is their sovereign decision. The question is only whether this government will ever be sovereign to make and enforce sovereign decisions. Its sovereignty is now limited to supporting the occupation or conjuring a future in national self-determination harmonious with the occupying power.

The Americans would obviously like nothing more than to change their occupation regime into a form of “indirect rule”. A surrogate government is needed that can assert power and generously serve the interests of the US. However the Iraqi resistance was directed against this scenario from the beginning. Therefore it cannot be destroyed.