 Fr. Joseph Mulligsn, SJ, Prisoner of Conscience |
School of the Americas |
Iraq: Another Vietnam?
Now that the occupation of Iraq by the US-led coalition has entered its second year, the disturbing question presents itself: Is it possible that this could become “another Vietnam”?
The US has expressed its intentions of turning over the administration of Iraq by June 30 to an Iraqi governing council chosen and structured under US dominance. The degree to which this will be acceptable to most Iraqis is not yet clear—given its “made in the USA” label.
But the US military will remain in large numbers to protect the new Iraqi state structure against dissidents and terrorists—0a volatile situation bearing close resemblance to that of South Vietnam in the 1960s. There, the US had taken up the mantle of preserving order and preventing communism after the French colonialists were defeated at DIENBIENPHU in 1954. In Iraq our current allies, the British, were the colonial managers in the early 20 th century.
Knowing that Ho Chi Minh, the communist independence fighter who had struggled against foreign occupation of his country for decades, would have won a vast majority of the votes in any free election, the US refused to allow elections, instead propping up a brutal and corrupt puppet regime. Today the US takes the position that Iraq is not ready for elections because we cannot be certain that the outcome would be in our interest.
In South Vietnam the escalating US military support for the unpopular regimes in Saigon, with increasingly brutal attacks on Vietnamese civilians in the countryside (the “sea” in which the Viet Cong rebels swam), drove more and more people to sympathize with or actively support the anti-Saigon forces. In Iraq, as long as a massive US military force remains as a guardian of the new state structure, nationalists and their fellow Muslim supporters from around the region will continue their violent resistance against the foreign soldiers and the political apparatus set up under their tutelage. And if the US escalates its counter-insurgent violence, it will drive more Iraqis into a more violent stance against the foreign intruders.
On one level, anti-communism in Southeast Asia was based on the Cold War containment strategy; but on another and more fundamental level, it was based on the need to keep the region within the free-market capitalist orbit for the benefit of US corporations and bankers. Similarly it is obvious (now that the WMDs and the ties to terrorism are exposed as phantoms) that the invasion and occupation of Iraq is based not only on US governmental and corporate interests in controlling oil but on the broader desire to “open up” the Iraqi economy to foreign (mostly US) ownership and profit-taking.
Amidst all the talk of a US-style Bill of Right and Constitution for Iraq, the underlying reality is that the economic system has already been determined by the US and its Iraqi collaborators, and “democracy” will not be allowed to go so far as to extend “rule by the people” to this fundamental dimension of their life.
It is likely that the fierce resistance will persist against the foreign troops and also against the economic infrastructure of the new Iraq which the US has imposed and will be protecting.
[Fr. Joseph Mulligan, SJ, is a Catholic priest from Detroit who works in Nicaragua. He participated in the protest against the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation at Ft. Benning, Georgia, last November and is currently serving a 90day sentence in the Harris County Jail in Hamilton, Georgia.]
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