The Legacy, Part Four

Hundreds of Fallujah residents burn U.S. and Israeli flags as they demonstrate in celebration of the departure of US troops from Iraq, on December 14, 2011.

AFP/Getty Images

Hundreds in Fallujah burn U.S. flag to celebrate troops pulling out of Iraq

Shouting slogans in support of the “resistance,” the demonstrators held up banners and placards inscribed with phrases like, “Now we are free” and “Fallujah is the flame of the resistance.”

Surrounded by the Iraqi army, demonstrators carried posters bearing photos of apparent insurgents, faces covered and carrying weapons.

They also held up pictures of U.S. soldiers killed and military vehicles destroyed in the two major offensives against the city in 2004.

“We are proud to have driven the occupier out of Iraq, at the cost of enormous sacrifice,” said Khalid al-Alwa, the local leader of the Islamic Party, a Sunni Muslim grouping.

Those who destroyed Iraq paid the price because the people here held them accountable.”

The demonstration, which was held in Al-Khadra Mohammediyah Square in the centre of Fallujah, was dubbed the first annual “festival to celebrate the role of the resistance.”

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I agree that it was the Iraqi people who drove the US military out of Iraq, but they did not do it in Fallujah and they did not do it using force.  They did it by pressuring their politicians to make an agreement with Bush to withdraw US troops many years in the future.  And then they did it by pressuring their politicians to NOT GIVE LEGAL IMMUNITY to the US troops after the withdrawal date.  In other words, they did it non-violently. 

And non-violent direct action is the ONLY thing that would have worked, because the US government and US military know very well how to do violence and force, and they routinely use those tools as a means of control.  But non-violent direct action is something they do not know how to counter properly, although they clearly tried to get Maliki and the Iraqi people to let the US military stay in Iraq.