This is an archive of the former website of the Maoist Internationalist Movement, which was run by the now defunct Maoist Internationalist Party - Amerika. The MIM now consists of many independent cells, many of which have their own indendendent organs both online and off. MIM(Prisons) serves these documents as a service to and reference for the anti-imperialist movement worldwide.

Conscription update:


Have the Iraqi people already won?

MIM has come under criticism for predicting there would be a draft about now in the united $tates if certain conditions did not arise. Our critics are generally right that it is not a good idea to make predictions in politics.

In 2004 we said, "MIM has predicted that there will be a draft after the election unless there is a huge military victory by the Iraqis or other Middle East fighters before that or a desperately radical anti-draft struggle in the upcoming months."(1) For sure there has been no radical anti-draft movement that has arisen. Iraqi insurgents have not dropped a nuke on the u.$. troops either, but whether or not there has been a victory by insurgents is more up in the air than one might think, despite MIM's critics.

One thing that MIM did not predict is that both Democrats and Republicans would be in political trouble. Democrats hold no power in the House, Senate or White House. At the same time, Bu$h is in trouble with multiple scandals and the underlying Iraq anxieties. Without a major propaganda coup, neither Bu$h nor anyone else has the political capital to push through a draft right now. It would take a major incident to change that.

Yet, according to House representative John Murtha, the Iraqi people have already won and rumor has it that he reflects the opinion of many generals who brief him:

I said over a year ago, and now the military and the Administration agrees, Iraq can not be won "militarily." I said two years ago, the key to progress in Iraq is to Iraqitize, Internationalize and Energize. I believe the same today. But I have concluded that the presence of U.S. troops in Iraq is impeding this progress.

Our troops have become the primary target of the insurgency. They are united against U.S. forces and we have become a catalyst for violence. U.S. troops are the common enemy of the Sunnis, Saddamists and foreign jihadists. I believe with a U.S. troop redeployment, the Iraqi security forces will be incentivized to take control. A poll recently conducted shows that over 80% of Iraqis are strongly opposed to the presence of coalition troops, and about 45% of the Iraqi population believe attacks against American troops are justified.(2)

Behind the major House speech by Murtha are people who look at numbers and see that despite increasing numbers, equipment and money the "bang for the buck" goes down in Iraq: in other words, the war effort is losing. So the number of casualties from year to year stays the same, but the equipment and money to accomplish that had to increase.

One thing we can say for sure, the Iraqi people did defeat Bu$h's original plan, which was to build up huge contractor business support for the war and sustain it on that basis with money from oil revenues. House rep Murtha pointed out "Only $9 billion of the $18 billion appropriated for reconstruction has been spent. Unemployment remains at about 60 percent. Clean water is scarce. Only $500 million of the $2.2 billion appropriated for water projects has been spent. And most importantly, insurgent incidents have increased from about 150 per week to over 700 in the last year."(2)

It is an inherent flaw of capitalism, that the people making the big profits have the most money to bribe politicians with. Exxon-Mobil just set an historical record for profits and that corporation has clout, while the alternative energy industry is an idea without much profit yet with which to influence Congress. It becomes a vicious cycle, where to make money one must have government influence but to have government influence, one must make money. Only socialism is the answer to that problem in general. In this case, the insurgents in Iraq have closed down the vicious cycle by making it very difficult to make profit in Iraq--with their obviously controversial tactics of killing civilian contractors, who MIM sees as exploiters and oppressors, contrary to the left-wing of the white nationalist movement in Amerika.

Another quote from Murtha tries to give the overall direction of the numbers: "But the war continues to intensify. Deaths and injuries are growing, with over 2,079 confirmed American deaths. Over 15,500 have been seriously injured and it is estimated that over 50,000 will suffer from battle fatigue. There have been reports of at least 30,000 Iraqi civilian deaths."(3)

Murtha went on to say that the military is "broken, worn out."(4) If Murtha is right, then MIM was not wrong in its prediction. The Iraqi people just won sooner than people might have expected. The brass knows which way the wind blows, even if the public and politicians have not adjusted yet. We're not saying to end the struggle against the Iraq War by any stretch of the imagination, but nor should we be saying the Iraqi people haven't won. We're in the phase now where we can force our politicians into accepting the obvious sooner than they would if allowed to pull some political stunts on behalf of patriotic military recruiting.

Notes:
1. http://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/agitation/draft/draftupdate05252004.html One thing we got right for sure was that Uncle $am's going to the UN for troops for Iraq was just a smokescreen that did not end up accomplishing anything except to prepare U.$. public opinion with "we tried."

2. http://www.house.gov/apps/list/press/pa12_murtha/pr051117iraq.html
"Nobody admires our armed forces more than I do, and I’m so proud of the service of our military men and women. I’ve worked hard during my 32 years in Congress to make sure that our military has the equipment, training, medical care and other support it needs to accomplish its mission, and to save and protect the lives of service members and their families.

"The military had no problem recruiting directly after 9/11 because everyone understood that we had been attacked. But now the military’s ability to attract recruits is being hampered by the prospect of prolonged, extended and repeated deployments; inadequate equipment; shortened home stays; the lack of any connection between Iraq and the brutal attacks of 9/11; and – most importantly – the administration’s constantly changing, undefined, open-ended military mission in Iraq. I didn’t have concerns like these when I enlisted in the Marines during the Korean War or volunteered to go to Vietnam.

"I have devoted my entire career to supporting our military forces and will continue to do so. I believe there is no greater honor than to serve and defend this great nation."

For a Connecticut soldier on how he would not join the military had he known war was going to go on this long:
http://www.middletownpress.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=15977694&BRD=1645&PAG=461&de pt_id=10856&rfi=6

Murtha, http://www.house.gov/apps/list/press/pa12_murtha/PRrecruiting.html
3. http://www.house.gov/apps/list/press/pa12_murtha/pr051117iraq.html Murtha has also said his "friends" in the White House would come to agree with him that the war cannot be won militarily.