Coalition crumbles

Mutiny in Iraq

The last month of inflammatory US aggression in Iraq has inspired what can only be described as a mutiny: Waves of soldiers, workers and politicians under the command of the US occupation authority are suddenly refusing to follow orders and abandoning their posts. First Spain announced it would withdraw its troops, then Honduras, Dominican Republic, Nicaragua and Kazakhstan.

South Korean and Bulgarian troops were pulled back to their bases, while New Zealand is withdrawing its engineers. El Salvador, Norway, the Netherlands and Thailand will likely be next.

And then there are the mutinous members of the US-controlled Iraqi army. Since the latest wave of fighting began, they've been donating their weapons to resistance fighters in the South and refusing to fight in Falluja, saying that they didn't join the army to kill other Iraqis. By late April, Maj. Gen. Martin Dempsey, commander of the 1st Armored Division, was reporting that "about 40 percent [of Iraqi security officers] walked off the job because of intimidation. And about 10 percent actually worked against us."

And it's not just Iraq's soldiers who have been deserting the occupation. Four ministers of the Iraqi Governing Council have resigned their posts in protest. Half the Iraqis with jobs in the secured "green zone"--as translators, drivers, cleaners--are not showing up for work.

Minor mutinous signs are emerging even within the ranks of the US military: Privates Jeremy Hinzman and Brandon Hughey have applied for refugee status in Canada as conscientious objectors and Staff Sgt. Camilo Mejia is facing court martial after he refused to return to Iraq on the grounds that he no longer knew what the war was about.

The invasion of Iraq began with a call to mutiny--a call made by the United States. In the weeks leading up to last year's invasion, US Central Command bombarded Iraqi military and political officials with phone calls and e-mails urging them to defect from Saddam's ranks. Fighter planes dropped 8 million leaflets urging Iraqi soldiers to abandon their posts and assuring that no harm would come to them.

Of course, these soldiers were promptly fired when Paul Bremer took over and are now being frantically rehired as part of the reversal of the de-Baathification policy. It's just one more example of lethal incompetence that should lead all remaining supporters of US policy in Iraq to one inescapable conclusion: It's time for a mutiny.