The US War And Occupation Of Iraq-The Murder Of A Society

American society itself is suffering deadly consequences from this war. The number of US soldiers killed in Iraq has topped 3,400, with every indication that the casualty rate is climbing as the Bush administration's "surge" sends combat troops into the densely populated and overwhelmingly hostile neighborhoods of Baghdad. Another 30,000 American military personnel have been wounded or injured, many of them grievously. Undoubtedly, hundreds of thousands more will suffer the psychological effects of having participated in a dirty colonial war. The war's daily drain on the US economy is estimated at over $300 million, with predictions that its total cost could top $2 trillion. There is an even greater cost, however, in terms of the damage done by this criminal war to the political, social and, indeed, moral health of American society. The Iraq war--all of the tired propaganda about the "war on terrorism," the struggle for "democracy" and the "liberation" of the Iraqi people notwithstanding--is a failed attempt by America's financial elite to further enrich itself and secure its continued global hegemony through the naked theft of Iraq's oil wealth. Every section of the US political and corporate establishment, all branches and levels of government, both major political parties, and the mass media are all implicated in massive war crimes. Criminality on such a grand scale cannot go unpunished without grave implications for the future of the American people and, indeed, all of humanity. Taken together, US operations in Iraq have amounted to sociocide--the deliberate and systematic murder of an entire society. A series of recent reports have pointed to the scale of death, destruction and oppression that have been wrought by the US occupation, now in its fifth year. http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/may2007/iraq-m19.shtml http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/may2007/irq2-m21.shtml

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