home / subscribe / donate / books / archives / search / links / feedback / events / faq


Inside the New Print Edition of Our Subscriber-Only Newsletter!

When NATO Killed Journalists

Ten years ago, NATO’s planes deliberately bombed Serbia’s main television and radio station. Sixteen media workers died. Tiphaine Dickson reports the barely credible aftermath, and CNN’s smelly role. Wounded Knee is back in the news, with an upcoming trial and new documentary. We launch James Abourezk’s thrilling series, Adventures in Indian Country, on the birth of AIM and his own role as US Senator. ALSO in this new edition of our subscriber-only newsletter, Alexander Cockburn tells the history of Harry Kingman and  Stiles Hall, an institution that changed the face of Berkeley and shaped the Sixties. Get your new edition today by subscribing online or calling 1-800-840-3683 Contributions to CounterPunch are tax-deductible. Click here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now! CounterPunch books and gear make great presents.

Order CounterPunch By Email For Only $35 a Year !

Meet & Debate (Perhaps Even Date) CPers Online at CounterPunch's New Facebook Page!

Today's Stories

May 8-10, 2009

Paul Wolf
Obama's Axis of Obedience

Neve Gordon
Jailed for Caring

May 7, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
Criminalizing Criticism of Israel

Chris Floyd
A Full-Court Press for Pakistan War

Andy Worthington
Mixed Messages on Torture

Alan Farago
No Place Like Home: a Stress Test for Land Use, Not Just Banks

Ray McGovern
Deux ex Machina on Torture?

Dave Lindorff
Stain Removal: Impeaching the Torture Judge

Eric Toussaint /
Damien Millet
Why is There Rampant Famine in the 21st Century?

Ana M. Malinow, MD
Why We Need a Single-Payer Health Care System

Jeff Armstrong
Freeing Leonard Peltier: What Would Warren Harding Do?

Norman Solomon
A Green New Deal

Website of the Day
The End of Lake Mead?

May 6, 2009

Doug Peacock
The Fate of the Yellowstone Grizzly

Patrick Cockburn
Afghans to Obama: Get Out, Take Karzai With You

Richard Neville
The Torturer's Apprentice

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
To Power a Nation: Nuclear Bombs or Sunshine?

Winslow T. Wheeler
Of Pork and Baloney: Obama's Defense Budget

Deepak Tripathi
Pakistan in Crisis

Stephen Soldz
A "Natural Reaction": APA Ethics Policy-Maker Endorses Torture

Reuven Kaminer
Nice is Not Enough: Obama vs. Netanyahu and Lieberman

David Macaray
The Chrysler-UAW Deal

Kevin Zeese
Why We Were Arrested at the Senate Finance Committee Hearings

Marjorie Cohn
Stanford Antiwar Alums Call for War Crimes Investigation of Condoleezza Rice

Coalition for an Ethical Psychology
Investigate Psychologist and Health Provider Complicity in Torture

Website of the Day
Who's Behind the Financial Meltdown?

 

May 5, 2009

William Blum
Torture and Mr. Obama

Uri Avnery
Netanyahu's Plan

Steven Higgs
Autism and Toxic Pollution

Dean Baker
Why Economists Should Learn Arithmetic

Daniel Wolff
The Education of Rachel Carson

Sibel Edmonds
The Broken Congress

Carole King Klein
A New Chance to Save the Northern Rockies

Fidel Castro
Giving One's All

Belén Fernández
Oil and Aguardiente in the Ecuadoran Elections

Dan Bacher
Schwarzenegger's Big Lie About Fish vs. Jobs

Website of the Day
"I Married Isis on the Fifth Day of May"

May 4, 2009

James G. Abourezk
The AIPAC Spy Case

Jeff Leys
Obama's War Budget

Patrick Cockburn
Afghan Ayatollahs Press Marital Rape Law

Andy Worthington
A Start on Guantánamo, But Not Enough

Jaime Avilés
Mexico's Plague-Bringers

David Swanson
An Even Worse Bybee Memo

Paul Craig Roberts
Working with Jack Kemp

P. Sainath
Celeb Crusades and the Death of Politics

Eugenia Tsao
Canada's Obama and the Cult of the Prof

Benjamin Dangl
Protest and Rubber Bullets in Paraquay

Sami Al-Arian
Mourning William Moffitt

Website of the Day
"Soldiers Are Cutting Us Down": Kent State, May 4, 1970

May 1 - 3, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Game-Changers: Specter Jumps, Souter Quits

Gary Leupp
Dropping the AIPAC Spying Case

Peter Linebaugh
The Key to the Bastille

Jeffrey St. Clair /
Joshua Frank:
Half Life of a Toxic War: Iraq's Wrecked Environment

C. G. Estabrook
Minion of the Long War

Patrick Cockburn
Kabul's New Elite

Mike Whitney
Economy on the Ropes

Pierre Sprey /
Winslow Wheeler
What "Sweeping Overhaul" of the Pentagon?

Andy Worthington
Al-Marri's Plea Deal: Dictatorial Powers Unchallenged

Mairead Maguire
Stand Up to Israeli Apartheid: a Letter to Obama From a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate

Nadia Hijab
The Israel Boycott is Biting

Diane Farsetta
Life, Death and Water Policy

Michael Calderón-Zaks
The Déjà Vu Flu: Why Much of the Discussion About Swine Flu is Racist

Richard Rhames
When Piggies Come Home to Roost: Swine Flu and the Industrial Meat Gulags

Russell Mokhiber
Inside the Beltway Baucus

Ramzy Baroud
Clinton's Unpromising Start

Rannie Amiri
Understanding Lebanon's June Elections

Deb Reich
No Talking, Dammit!

Steven Higgs
Indiana Criminalizes Dissent: Roadblocks on the NAFTA Highway

Brian Cloughley
Malice in Blunderland

David Michael Green
The Party's Over

Farzana Versey
Sex, Swat and Susan Boyle

Jim Goodman
Think Before You Eat: Agriculture and the Environment

Carl Finamore
New Prescription for a Healthy Union Movement

Christopher Brauchli
The Sounds of Silence: the Texas Option

Susie Day
The Real Cause of Unemployment: Employees!

David Yearsley
Nuts Over Beethoven

Lorenzo Wolff
Three Minutes of Perfection

Peter Stone Brown
Dancing with Dylan

Poets' Basement Dominguez, Orloski and Springate

Website of the Weekend
May Day Europe

April 30, 2009

Ellen Cantarow
Obama and "Two States": Seamless Continuity From Bush Time

Dana L. Cloud
The McCarthyism That Horowitz Built

Paul W. Lovinger /
Jeannette Hassberg
A Nation of Laws

Binoy Kampmark
Swine at the Trough: the Business of Pandemics

Brian Downing
The Perils of Modernization in Afghanistan

Frank Snepp
Tortured by the Past

David Swanson
The Wrong Torture Question

Conn Hallinan
The Coming Asian Storm

Ron Jacobs
Not Dead Yet: an Interview with Jerry Gordon on the State of the Antiwar Movement

John Goekler
The Only Path to a Middle East Picnic?

Jasmine L. Tyler /
Anthony Papa
An End to Crack/Powder Cocaine Sentencing Disparity?

Website of the Day
Emergency Petition: Stop Coal Industry Intimidation of Activists

April 29, 2009

Joann Wypijewski
Death at Work in America

Patrick Cockburn
The Taliban's Roads to Kabul

Andy Worthington
Cheney's Twisted World

Chris Floyd
The Specter Diversion

Dave Lindorff
No More Excuses: a Specter is Haunting the Democrats

Jeremy Scahill
The Nuremberg Truth and Reconciliation Commission?

Doug Henwood
Zionist Lobby Targets Another Tenured Professor: an Interview with William Robinson

Michael Hudson
Will Iceland be Handed Over to a New Gang of Kleptocrats?

Russell Mokhiber
My Ron Pollack Problem--And Yours

Eric Toussaint
Ecuador at the Crossroads

Website of the Day
An Interview with Leslie and Andrew Cockburn on "American Casino"

April 28, 2009

Uri Avnery
A Little Red Light: On Israeli Fascism

Jeremy Scahill
Obama's Iraq: the Picture of Dorian Gray

Dean Baker
The Perfect Gift for Wall Street: a Financial Transactions Tax

Michael D. Yates
At the Factory Gate

Conn Hallinan
Georgian Plots? Saakavili's "Order No. 2"

John Stauber
Beyond MoveOn

Tom Barry
The Failed Border Security Initiative

Harvey Wasserman
Who Pays for America's Chernobyl Roulette?

Jeff Nygaard
Pirates, Profits and Propaganda

Frederico Fuentes
Why the U.S. Still Hates Cuba

Website of the Day
The Man Behind the Hood

April 27, 2009

Pam Martens
The Far Right's Plot to Capture New Hampshire

Patrick Cockburn
Torture? It Probably Killed More Americans Than 9/11

Andrew J. Bacevich Guardian of the Status Quo: Obama's Sins of Omission

Mitu Sengupta
The Bloodbath in Sri Lanka

Franklin Lamb
Hillary Does Beirut: The 165-Minute Swoop-In

Firmin DeBrabander
Crimes of Economic Madness

Dave Lindorff
Wide Open to Pandemic?

Russell Mokhiber
How Corrupt is That?

Mike Whitney
Pinter's Message to Obama

Mark Weisbrot
Overhauling the IMF

Rev. José M. Tirado
Iceland's New Dawn: How the Right Got Trounced

Website of the Day
American Casino

April 24-26, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Putting the Bush Years on Trial

Marjorie Cohn
Torture Used to Try to Link Saddam with 9/11

Andy Worthington
Who Ordered the Torture of Abu Zubaydah?

Jeremy Scahill
Are Leading Democrats Afraid of a Special Prosecutor to Investigate Torture?

Chris Floyd
Top of the Heap: the Democrats' Teachable Moment on Torture

Mike Whitney
A Housing Crash Update

Anthony DiMaggio
Obama and the Housing Crisis

Chris Kromm
Democratic Lobbyists Key to Fight Against Employee Free Choice Act

Saul Landau
Seventeen Months in "the Hole:"
an Interview with the Leader of the Cuban Five

Dave Lindorff
Free John Walker Lindh

Greg Moses
The Debt Looters

Joshua Frank
Calling for a Coal Moratorium: an Interview with Ted Nace

Fred Gardner
Collective Farming and the Lynch Case

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Homework, Testing and Stealth Apartheid in Education

David Michael Green
Of Tea Parties and Teleprompters

Ramzy Baroud
Middle East Spies: a New Front in Gaza's Conflict

Rannie Amiri
Mubarak's Expanding Enemies List

Laura Carlsen
Mr. President, Calderon is Not Mexico

Richard Morse
The Haitian People Need a Lobbyist

Nikolas Kozloff
Protecting the Bald Eagle: a Task Now Falling to ... Hugo Chavez?

Kent Peterson
The Fight to Save Mexico's Mangroves

Robert Bryce
The Ethanol Scammers Rent a General

Niranjan Ramakrishnan The Financial Experts

Ron Jacobs
Torture is More Than Just "Harsh Tactics"

Richard Rhames
Roman Legends, Book Burning and History's Hunt

Stephen Martin
Wherefore Art Thou American Dream?

David Yearsley
Rodgers, Hammerstein, Michener and Nostalgia's Clammy Embrace

Poets' Basement
Khalil and Mankh

Website of the Weekend
Doug and Andrea Peacock on Grizzlies and Edward Abbey

April 23, 2009

Eamonn Fingleton
How the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times Buried the Madoff Scandal for at Least Four Years

Ray McGovern
Obama Plays Hamlet on Torture

Michael Ratner
The Torture Commission Trap

Alan Farago
The Quicksand Economy

Rob Larson
Business Gets Carded

Nadia Hijab
The Real Heroes of Durban

Fawzia Afzal-Khan
Deconstructing the Taliban

Dave Lindorff
Are Members of Congress Being Blackmailed?

Helen Redmond
Selling Out Single-Payer: the "Public Option" Con

Adam Federman
The Battle Over New York's Marcellus Shale

Website of the Day
An Interactive Map of Vanishing Employment Across the Country

April 22, 2009

Chris Floyd
The Fatal Thread: Torture, War and the Imperial Project

Joanne Mariner
Torture Evidence and Terror Blacklists

Vijay Prashad
Obama's Afghan Plan: Fracturing the Antiwar Movement

Gareth Porter
U.S. Lacks Capacity to Win Over Afghans

Dean Baker
The Tyranny of Bad Economics

Peter Morici
Housing Sales and Fixing the Economy

Winslow T. Wheeler
Eliminating Bad Pentagon Habits

Barucha Calamity Peller
The Battle to Take Back the New School

Harvey Wasserman
Chernobyl Could Happen Here

Aisha Brown /
Dedrick Muhammad

White Privilege in the Americas

Teo Ballvé
Obama's Feel Good Meeting with Colombia's Uribe

Website of the Day
Ahmedinejad's Durban Speech: What He Actually Said

April 21, 2009

Randy Rowland
Lindy Blake's Great Escape

Dave Lindorff
Jay Bybee's Conspiracy to Torture

Fidel Castro
The Secret Summit

George McGovern
Pull Out of Iraq This Year

Greg Moses
The Unemployment Channel

Benjamin Dangl
Argentina Remembers

Sonia Nettnin
Saving Lives in Gaza

Frank Barat
The Death of Bassem: a Shooting at the Wall in Bil'n

Binoy Kampmark
Legal Purgatory and John Demjanjuk

John V. Walsh
Code Red for Single Payer

David Macaray
SAG Should be Praised, Not Assailed

Website of the Day
Bonus Man: For Executive Assholes Everywhere

April 20, 2009

Mike Whitney
Housing Bust Comes Roaring Back, Worse Than Ever

Andrea Peacock
Histrionics and Legalisms in Missoula

Henry A. Giroux
Ten Years After Columbine: the Tragedy of Youth Deepens

Liaquat Ali Khan
Drone Attacks on Pakistan's Indigenous Tribes

Fred Gardner
Obama's DoJ Backs Prosecution of Medical Marijuana Providers

Stephen Soldz
Obama, Blair, Panetta and the Torture Memos: Praising Moral Cowards, Ignoring Real Heroes

Nadia Hijab
Obama's Multi-Polar Middle East

Dave Lindorff
The Meeting in Trinidad

P. Sainath
India's Press Nixes "R" Word

Nelson P Valdés
A Modest (Transition) Proposal to Obama

Mark Engler
American Empire Foreclosed?

Belén Fernández
The FARC Can't Dance

Website of the Day
Dear Mr. Buffett...


 

Bookmark and Share  

Weekend Edition
May 8-10, 2009

Sending a Message to Obama

The Return of the Suicide Bombers

By STEVE NIVA

Suicide bombings are back in Iraq, signaling that the Iraq War is far from over. After a significant downturn, with only six suicide attacks between December 2008 and March 2009, there have been 25 suicide bombings in Iraq in the last two months, contributing to the worst spate of violence in Iraq in nearly a year. The bombers have revealed a new audacity and sophistication, striking in all parts of the country and against many seemingly highly secured targets.

The new wave of suicide bombings culminated in a coordinated series of four bomb blasts across Iraq on March 23, three of them suicide bombings. The bombings spiked in April, with attacks on Iraqi army bases and police stations in Shia enclaves and holy sites. Attacks also targeted U.S.-backed Sunni militia leaders and U.S. forces, including a massive suicide truck bomb in Mosul that killed five U.S. soldiers, the deadliest strike on American troops in a year. The nearly twenty suicide bombings in April have made it the deadliest month in 2009 for Iraqi civilians, with nearly 300 dead according to Iraqi Interior Ministry officials, compared with only 51 killed in February and 70 in January.

With the seemingly forgotten war in Iraq now back in the media spotlight, U.S. officials have downplayed the bloody surge in suicide bombings as a desperate response to the fact that the United States is successfully ending the war and withdrawing troops, as announced by President Barack Obama in a February 27 policy speech on Iraq. In a particularly embarrassing episode, the usually careful Defense Secretary Robert Gates echoed former Vice President Dick Cheney’s infamous 2005 claim that Iraq’s insurgency was "in the last throes" by claiming that the mayhem in Iraq was simply a "last gasp" by al-Qaeda to "reverse the progress that’s been made." During her unannounced visit to Iraq in late April, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was quick to interpret the violence as a "signal that the rejectionists fear Iraq is going in the right direction".

The reality, however, is that the latest surge in violence isn’t because the United States is leaving, but because the timeframe and terms of withdrawal are unclear. The real story behind the new wave of suicide bombings is that Iraqi insurgents are in conflict with the American backed Iraqi state and the U.S. effort to perpetuate an order favorable to continued American influence and interests in Iraq even while American forces draw down, a policy long known in the region as neocolonialism.

Suicide Bombing Because the United States is Not Leaving

Despite its high-minded claims about "ending the war," Obama’s announced withdrawal plan clearly doesn’t end the Iraq occupation, but rather continues it in a new form. The plan only calls for the withdrawal of "combat troops" by August 2010, while leaving behind 35,000-50,000 occupying troops until the end of 2011, many of whom will be combat troops simply relabeled as "advisory and assistance brigades." The plan says nothing about the parallel army of over 100,000 American mercenaries and private contractors who currently roam Iraq, nor does it address the fate of 283 military bases and installations in Iraq, including the 58 permanent bases where U.S. troops will continue to be garrisoned. Furthermore, U.S. withdrawal is subject to Pentagon review with options extended for many years to come.

As Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) commented immediately after Obama’s withdrawal speech: "You cannot leave combat troops in a foreign country to conduct combat operations and call it the end of the war. You can’t be in and out at the same time."

Furthermore, the United States has built up a Shia-dominated state through its faulty counterinsurgency "surge" policy, with Maliki as prime minister, backed by a reconstructed military and security apparatus that is predominantly Shia and hostile to the Sunni population. Although the United States has also funded and armed Sunni tribal leaders who oppose al-Qaeda, they also oppose the Shia government, leaving behind a new balkanized Iraqi order barely held together by force of arms.

Hence, the primary mission of American troops in Iraq both now and after the initial drawdown in August 2010 will be to preserve and extend this regime, both by incorporating former Sunni and Shia insurgents who are willing to work with the United States sponsored system and by eliminating those who are opposed, incarcerating the rest behind walled off enclaves patrolled by unmanned aerial drones. Establishing a client regime to protect the interests of empire, while leaving behind a garrison of troops and bases has long been termed neocolonialism.

The neocolonial trappings of Obama’s exit strategy have not been lost on the insurgents. The timing, targets, and claims of responsibility for the recent wave of suicide bombings indicate that key members of the Iraqi insurgency have concluded that Obama’s plan only extends the U.S. occupation and have decided to unleash a new round of violence to prevent the new order from taking root.

Martyrdom’s Logic

This shouldn’t be surprising. In his seminal work The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism, University of Chicago political scientist Robert Pape observed that the taproot of suicide bombings is foreign military occupation, not Islamic fanaticism or a "cult of martyrdom." The majority of suicide attacks worldwide, including many by secular and non-Muslim groups like the Tamil Tigers, have been launched as part of organized campaigns to achieve a political goal, the most important of which is the ejection of foreign military occupiers.

Predictably, suicide bombings in Iraq only began after the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003 and have subsequently acquired a frequency and lethality unprecedented in other similar campaigns. But suicide attacks in Iraq have spiked in response to two sets of circumstances: as a response to military offensives, and as a response to major political initiatives that emphasize Iraq as being on the path to stability.

The latest spike in suicide bombings reveals this strategic logic; the campaign began the week following Obama’s speech and peaked in April, coinciding with the sixth anniversary of the fall of Baghdad to U.S. forces in 2003. The suicide attacks have targeted all the major elements of the post-"surge" Iraqi regime, including Iraqi security and police forces, Shia civilians, and political parties and other perceived supporters of the U.S. occupation and the new Iraqi regime, such as the U.S. backed Sunni militias. It appears insurgents are attempting to create an atmosphere of insecurity within Iraq to destroy efforts by U.S. forces and the Iraqi government to impose law and order, and to create conditions that will compel the United States, already distracted by surging violence in Afghanistan, to withdraw sooner rather than later.

The strategic and broad-based nature of this latest suicide bombing campaign is further illustrated in the claims made by various insurgent organizations responsible for bombings. Dangerously, there are signs of renewed Ba’athist and Islamist coordination. The "Islamic State of Iraq," an umbrella group for Sunni Islamists including al-Qaeda in Iraq, asserted responsibility for the bombing that killed five U.S. soldiers in Mosul as well as several others, claiming that the recent attacks were part of "Plan of Good Harvest," a new campaign against U.S. forces and their supporters in Iraq. Izzat Ibrahim Al-Douri, the fugitive former deputy of Saddam Hussein and a leading figure behind Sunni and Baath insurgents in Iraq, highlighted the strategic direction of the campaign in an audiotape broadcast on Al Jazeera on April 7, calling Maliki’s government and the Iraqi elections illegitimate because they were the result of the American military occupation. He urged insurgents to maintain their struggle against U.S. forces and Iraq’s government because "the political process is the occupation’s main project, so attack it through all means available to you."

Perhaps the most ominous development for American and Iraqi plans for a new order is that increasingly, members from the U.S.-backed Sons of Iraq Sunni militia appear to have rejoined the insurgency and "have gone into attack mode."

Ending Occupation Key to Ending Suicide Bombings

The return of violence and suicide bombings to Iraq illustrates the enduring reality that U.S. occupation forces and the illegitimacy of the new Iraqi regime are the cause, not the solution. Obama’s plan, which amounts to the continuation of the U.S. occupation in a new form, has virtually assured the return of suicide bombings.

While it’s doubtful Iraq will witness another descent into violence like in 2006 or 2007, this new violence clearly represents a new phase in the insurgency. As the always insightful Anthony Shadid of the Washington Post observes, "In some ways, the attacks are reminiscent of an earlier stage of the insurgency, before the sectarian war was ignited in 2006, when assailants carried out bombings as spectacles intended to magnify the sense of U.S. failure. Then, as now, the carnage sent a message that no efforts, American or Iraqi, could result in a sense of the ordinary."

Suicide bombings can’t win wars, nor can the bombers drive out U.S. forces from Iraq. But what they can achieve is a pervasive sense of panic, uncertainty, and fear among the populace such that the battle by Iraqi state authorities and Western forces to win them over will be eternally futile. Suicide bombings create a political anarchy, and this kind of war can last as long as the insurgents don’t run out of suicide bombers, which isn’t anywhere near the horizon.

Therefore, any real solution to the enduring Iraq War must address the taproot of suicide bombings, as Pape points out — foreign occupation in any of its forms. The history of Iraq shows that even a more discreet foreign presence, such as that employed by the British after 1930, will only further compromise local authority. As long as the United States attempts to salvage strategic interests in the region from its imbroglio in Iraq, the effort to develop a truly independent Iraqi security force will prove disingenuous, and many Iraqis will reject the legitimacy of their government as a pawn of indirect imperial rule and continue their insurgency.

In order to remove the provocation for the insurgency the Obama administration must make manifestly clear that its plan to end the Iraq War will also end the occupation. To do so, it will need to plan for complete withdrawal of all U.S. troops according to an accelerated timetable, and do so in a way that prepares Iraq for a future that is fully and without reservation Iraqi, not shaped by U.S. designs and interests. Hence, popular pressure must be mobilized in the United States and elsewhere to push Obama to return to the spirit of his earlier antiwar stance and withdraw all U.S. troops, mercenaries, and military base personnel by August 2010. In addition, the Obama administration must take steps to initiate a new political process, preferably under U.N. or international auspices, which will allow Iraq to formulate a new state on Iraqi terms, no longer governed by American sponsored laws, procedures and client parties. As International Crisis Group analyst Joost Hilterman points out, "Only a new national compact could bring a decisive end to violence, as it will marginalize spoilers."

A continuing U.S. presence, no matter how indirect, only favors new waves of suicide bombers. In an interview with AFP on April 17, Iraq’s Defense Ministry Spokesman, Mohammed al-Askari, warned that a prolonged U.S. military presence in the country would paradoxically favor al-Qaeda by giving the militants enough excuse to justify their terrorist acts. "It would be good for al-Qaeda if U.S. forces stayed in Iraq, because they could justify their kidnappings, bombings and killings," he noted. Many Iraqis concur with this logic. "The situation in Iraq will improve only if the Americans and the Iraqi politicians withdraw from Iraq," said one citizen in Baghdad.

Unfortunately, many U.S. officials, including the commanding U.S. officer in Iraq, General Ray Odierno, indicated that the violence may compel them to prolong the occupation rather than end it by leaving U.S. troops in major Iraqi cities, even after the scheduled June 30, 2009 withdrawal date for all U.S. combat troops.

But just because Iraq’s insurgents are planning for a long war against the U.S. occupation and its client state doesn’t mean the U.S. needs stay in Iraq. The history of suicide bombings in the recent period has shown that when the taproot of suicide bombings is turned off and the occupation ends, the bombings will end. Other examples in the region abound: Hezbollah ceased suicide bombings when Israel finally withdrew from Lebanese territory, and Hamas largely ended its use of suicide bombings when Israel withdrew its settlers and soldiers from the Gaza Strip in 2005, though it continued to use other violent tactics when Israel failed to end its military siege over Gaza.

If the United States fully withdraws from Iraq, it’s quite likely that we will see Iraqis engage in a major effort to avert the chaos the United States claims to be protecting them from.

Steve Niva teaches at Evergreen College.

Reprinted from Foreign Policy In Focus.

Now Available from CounterPunch Books!

Spell Albuquerque:
Memoir of a
"Difficult Student"

By Tennessee Reed

Waiting for Lightning
to Strike:
The Fundamentals

of Black Politics
Kevin Alexander Gray

Click Here to Buy!

"The Case Against Israel"
Michael Neumann's Devastating Rebuttal of Alan Dershowitz

Click Here to Buy!

The Inside Story of the Shannon Five's Smashing Victory Over the
Bush War Machine

By Harry Browne

Born Under a Bad Sky:
Notes from the Dark Side

of the Earth
By Jeffrey St. Clair

RED STATE REBELS:
Tales of Grassroots Resistance from the Heartland

Edited by
Jeffrey St. Clair
and Joshua Frank


How the Press Led
the US into War


Buy End Times Now!
New From
CounterPunch Books
The Secret Language
of the Crossroads:
HOW THE IRISH
INVENTED SLANG
By Daniel Cassidy
WINNER OF THE
AMERICAN BOOK AWARD!

Click Here to Buy!


Saul Landau's Bush and Botox World with a Foreword by Gore Vidal

Click Here to Order!
 
Grand Theft Pentagon
How They Made a Killing on the War on Terrorism
 
 

 
 
 


The Occupation
by Patrick Cockburn

 
 

Humanitarian Imperialism
By Jean Bricmont
 

 
 

CITY BEAUTIFUL
By Tennessee Reed