Iraqis to Vote on Early U.S. Exit | Black Agenda Report

Iraqis to Vote on Early U.S. Exit

Glen Ford, BAR executive editor

19 Aug 2009

🖨️ Print Article

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford

Click the flash player below to listen to or the mic to download an mp3 copy of this BA Radio commentary.

On January 16 of next year, Iraqis will vote in national elections and a referendum on whether to send the Americans home by the end of 2010 – a year earlier than the U.S. expected. “There is no doubt – none whatsoever – that overwhelming majorities of Iraqis will vote to evict the American occupiers.” But the U.S. anti-war movement can take little of the credit.

Iraqis to Vote on Early U.S. Exit

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford

“Will Washington just give up the occupation and slither away?”

The American occupation of Iraq may be ending much sooner than Washington anticipated – but little thanks to the U.S. anti-war movement, which has in recent years made itself largely irrelevant to issues of war and peace. The Shi'ite-dominated government in Baghdad is asking Iraq's parliament to hold a popular referendum this coming January that will almost certainly demand the withdrawal of U.S. forces by the end of 2010, a year before the Obama administration's fuzzy target date of December, 2011. That means all U.S. military, not just so-called “combat” forces – the semantic farce deployed by the Obama administration to disguise a huge U.S. military and mercenary presence deep into the misty future.

There is no doubt – none whatsoever – that overwhelming majorities of Iraqis will vote to evict the American occupiers, whose flimsy and coerced United Nations “mandate” to remain in Iraq expired last December. That means there is no longer even a veneer of legal basis for the U.S. presence, once the Iraqis say it's time to go.

Despite what you have heard and seen and read in the U.S. corporate media, the great mass of Iraqis have always wanted the Americans out. Nobody on the planet except Americans ever believed the U.S. was in Iraq to protect anything other than American ambitions to dominate the land and resources of other peoples. The current regime in Baghdad promised the Iraqi people it would hold a referendum on the American presence this summer, but delayed the plebiscite to buy more time to consolidate their position, politically and militarily. The January 16 referendum will coincide with Iraq's national elections. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's faction could not hope to win those elections unless it allowed a vote on ridding the country of the U.S. Occupation.

“There is no doubt that overwhelming majorities of Iraqis will vote to evict the American occupiers.”

The Obama administration is no more in favor of Iraqis expressing their political will through the voting process than was the Bush administration, which only agreed to popular elections back in 2005 after Ayatolla al-Sistani threatened to bring a million Shi'ites into the streets of Baghdad. President Obama and his generals have applied every conceivable pressure to avoid a referendum on the occupation. Now it appears the clock is ticking – not in the Obama White House, where it could always be turned back on some pretext, but in Baghdad, where al-Maliki's government must show it is on the side of the people, and not the occupier.

None of the Iraq developments of the last two years were due to the U.S. anti-war movement, much of which effectively collapsed into the Obama campaign and then disintegrated.

When the Iraqi people declare at the polls in January that the Americans must pick up their marbles and leave, will Washington just give up the occupation and slither away? That's not in the nature of the imperial beast. But the U.S. will find it much more difficult to claim it is protecting the people whose house it broke into and plundered in March of 2003.

For Black Agenda Radio, I'm Glen Ford. On the web, go to www.BlackAgendaReport.com.

BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.

Do you need and appreciate Black Agenda Report articles? Please click on the DONATE icon, and help us out, if you can.

More Stories

Dian Maria Blandina
IMF Loans Continue to Undermine Health in Africa
29 Jun 2022
The International Monetary Fund has a long history of insisting on loan conditionalities which are harmful to public services. This practice did not change even during the pandemic, with African…
Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
Black Agenda Radio June 24, 2022
24 Jun 2022
Leftist formation wins Colombian presidential election, the effort to end involuntary servitude in U.S. prisons, the impeachment of a Black legislator in Brazil, and the nature of fascism and need…
Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
Historical Pact Victory in Colombian Election
24 Jun 2022
Ajamu Baraka is National Organizer of the Black Alliance for Peace. He joins us to discuss the recent election results in Colombia where Gustavo Petro, became the new president, and Francia Marquez,…
Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
Involuntary Servitude in the Prison System
24 Jun 2022
Savannah Eldrige is the founder of Coaliton to Abolish Slavery in Texas, an organization devoted to ending involuntary servitude in that state. She is also the founder of Be Frank 4 Justice which…
Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
Impeachment of Renato Freitas in Brazil
24 Jun 2022
Renato Freitas is a Black City Councillor in Curitiba, Brazil. He and others joined in national protests over the killing of Congolese immigrant Mugenyi Kabagambe, who was beaten to death after…