Time to Leave Iraq

September 13, 2004

The U.S. media momentarily focused on Iraq when the toll of Americans killed passed 1,000, but that only means that they won’t pay attention again until it reached 2,000. Meanwhile, Iraqis continue to die by the thousands.

Time to leave.

The Chicago Tribune says that 1,000 Iraqis, many of them civilians, died in the battle of Najaf: “Three weeks of urban warfare killed at least 1,000 Iraqi rebels and civilians, the governor of this battle-weary city said Saturday in his first estimate of the death toll since the standoff ended two weeks ago.”

Monday’s news? “Sixteen killed in U.S. strikes on Fallujah.” From the Guardian:

Witnesses said the bombing, which began at sunrise and continued for several hours, was centred on the city's residential al-Shurta neighbourhood. The attack damaged buildings and created clouds of black smoke, with ambulances and private cars rushing the injured to hospital.

Military officials said intelligence reports indicated that the strikes had been successful. "Based on analysis of these reports, Iraqi security forces and multinational forces effectively and accurately targeted these terrorists while protecting the lives of innocent civilians," the statement said.

However, Dr Adel Khamis, of Fallujah general hospital, said at least 16 people—including women and children—had been killed, and 12 others wounded.

Meanwhile in Baghdad, dozens more were killed yesterday , including an Al Arabiya television reporter who died live, on air, screaming, “I’m dying!”:

At least 37 people were killed in Baghdad alone. Many of them died when a U.S. helicopter fired on a disabled U.S. Bradley fighting vehicle as Iraqis swarmed around it, cheering, throwing stones and waving the black and yellow sunburst banner of Iraq’s most-feared terror organization.

The dead from the helicopter strike included Arab television reporter Mazen al-Tumeizi, who screamed, "I'm dying! I'm dying!" as a cameraman recorded the chaotic scene. An Iraqi cameraman working for the Reuters news agency and an Iraqi freelance photographer for Getty Images were wounded.

The Financial Times, no left-wing rag, says that tens of thousands of Iraqis are dead, and that the Anglo-American occupation should end :

An unknown number of mostly civilian Iraqis, certainly not less than 10,000 and possibly three times that number, have perished, and hundreds more are dying each week. After an invasion and occupation that promised them freedom, Iraqis have seen their security evaporate, their state smashed and their country fragment into a lawless archipelago ruled by militias, bandits and kidnappers.

The transitional political process, designed to lead to constituent assembly and general elections next year, has been undermined because the nervous U.S.-dominated occupation authority has insisted on hand-picking various permutations of interim Iraqi governors, mostly exiles or expatriates with no standing among their people. Whatever Iraqis thought about the Americans on their way in—and it was never what these émigré politicians told Washington they would be thinking—an overwhelming majority now views US forces as occupiers rather than liberators and wants them out.

The time has therefore come to consider whether a structured withdrawal of US and remaining allied troops, in tandem with a workable handover of security to Iraqi forces and a legitimate and inclusive political process, can chart a path out of the current chaos.