Occupation is not liberation - bring all troops home now!

Traveling Soldier is a newsletter for people on active-duty. Please forward this/print this/distribute this to anyone you know - family, friends, or whatever - who is serving. We need to connect with the troops if we are going to stop the war/occupation.

“Leave! … We want freedom!” shouted Iraqi protestors in Kut on April 23rd. “I want to leave,” replied Capt. Samuel Bakion as he reached under his flak jacket to show the protestors his wedding band attached to his dogtag chain. “I want to go back to America”. He told them that his wife was waiting for him back home in Minneapolis.

Unfortunately for the Iraqi people, Capt. Samuel Bakion, and hundreds of thousands of other troops, Washington wants to keep troops in Iraq for as long as it takes to install a pro-U.S. government. To this end, the U.S. has sent 20,000 more troops into Iraq – but since Bush has declared that the war is over, they are being disguised as a “stabilization force” that will merely “augment” the tens of thousands already inside Iraq.

The government claims the war was for democracy, but when asked about the possibility that Iraqis might choose an Islamic government, Donald Rumsfeld said bluntly: “That isn’t going to happen.” What the U.S. means by “democracy” was spelled out further by Lt. Gen. David McKiernan in a proclamation he wrote in Baghdad: “The coalition alone retains absolute authority within Iraq”. And in order to preserve this “absolute authority within Iraq”, the army has fired on anti-occupation protestors in Mosul and Fallujah, killing dozens.

The troops are in an unbelievably tight spot: caught between the orders of the politicians and Pentagon brass who want to control Iraq’s oil, and the people of Iraq who want the U.S. military out so that they can get on with their lives and rebuilding their country.

Genuine democracy and liberation means that the U.S. military must leave Iraq now – that is the will of the overwhelming majority of the Iraqi people. But forcing the biggest, most powerful military in the world to leave will be no small task. It will take Iraqis continuing to resist the occupation of their country.

But it will also take a mass movement in the U.S., a movement that draws in millions of working class people. This movement must understand that in order to be successful, it must link up with troops who have the power – if organized – to end the occupation and force the U.S. to leave Iraq. That’s what happened in Viet Nam and that’s what has to happen today.