It’s estimated that the attack against Mosul in Iraq that the United States is hoping to launch to remove ISIS governance, using Iraq troops, will result in 1.5 million refugees. Two million people were already “displaced” in the fighting over Mosul last summer, according to McClatchy News.
The warnings of the new refugee flood coming from the World Health Organization and the International Committee of the Red Cross may have been a factor causing the Obama administration to back off from publicizing a spring assault on Mosul. But the US plan is apparently still in place to use Iraqis and Kurds to retake Mosul on behalf of the US puppet government in Baghdad.
Clearly civilians will be the primary casualties in the slaughter that is now being engineered in Washington. The assault by Iraqi troops against Tikrit that began on March 2, 2015, reported The New York Times, could come at a great cost, given “the prominent role of Shiite militias, which are feared by the Sunni population.” Most people in Mosul are Sunni.
The historic playbook of US military intervention, as well as propaganda coming from the Congress and television commentators, suggests that US troops will soon re-penetrate Iraq en masse to “assist” in fighting ISIS – ISIS being the latest great evil identified by an American government controlled by oil moguls, weapons makers and bankers.
“Legal” cover for this latest tragedy to be visited on the Iraqi people by the United States is intended to be provided by President Barack Obama’s new Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF), now before the Congress. There, debate on the bill seems to be about how much more suffering America will continue to deliver to the people of Iraq, not whether the bill should be scrapped, along with the existing AUMF.
The current AUMF has been used to justify, among other crimes against humanity: the invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq; the drone war; torture; the horror that is Guantanamo prison; assassinations by special operations death squads; domestic and international electronic surveillance of hundreds of millions of people; and other vile activities that will probably never be fully documented.
What is so extraordinary about this situation is that an objective analysis of what the United States has been doing under the AUMF would find that these actions have been a total failure practically, as well as morally and legally. For example, US killing and detention in Iraq created the ground from which ISIS sprang. The violence the United States continues to perpetrate in the Middle East appears to be a major factor drawing recruits to ISIS.
On Saturday, March 21, there will be a noon rally in front of the White House not only to commemorate the 12th anniversary of the US invasion and occupation of Iraq, that some estimates find brought the deaths of more than a million Iraqis, but also to demand a halt to US bombing and drone attacks everywhere and total withdrawal of US forces, covert as well as overt, from the Middle East and Afghanistan.
The rally and march will be the culmination of “Spring Rising,” which starts on the afternoon of March 18, with a meet and greet and an evening of music, and includes on Thursday and Friday, March 19 and 20: lobbying on Capitol Hill organized by CODEPINK; a bus tour of work places in Washington of war planners and profiteers, organized by Cindy Sheehan; and at least six teach-ins that will include learning about the relationship of US military activity to climate change as well as to the militarization of US policy and the military’s lack of accountability.
If it will be a hardship to be in Washington, then please do your utmost to organize an event in your community.
March 21 is a critical moment in history when we must be in the street.
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We’ve borne witness to a chaotic first few months in Trump’s presidency.
Over the last months, each executive order has delivered shock and bewilderment — a core part of a strategy to make the right-wing turn feel inevitable and overwhelming. But, as organizer Sandra Avalos implored us to remember in Truthout last November, “Together, we are more powerful than Trump.”
Indeed, the Trump administration is pushing through executive orders, but — as we’ve reported at Truthout — many are in legal limbo and face court challenges from unions and civil rights groups. Efforts to quash anti-racist teaching and DEI programs are stalled by education faculty, staff, and students refusing to comply. And communities across the country are coming together to raise the alarm on ICE raids, inform neighbors of their civil rights, and protect each other in moving shows of solidarity.
It will be a long fight ahead. And as nonprofit movement media, Truthout plans to be there documenting and uplifting resistance.
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