The tragically all-too-familiar sound of a U.S. airstrike rang out across Baghdad on Jan. 4 as a drone struck a logistic center for the Popular Mobilization Forces, killing Commander Abu Taqwa Al-Saeedi and one other PMF senior leader. Six additional individuals were wounded.
Al-Saeedi’s assassination comes on the heels of a U.S. airstrike on Iraqi military positions on Dec. 27 that killed one Iraqi soldier and wounded 18 people.
The PMF functions as a paramilitary wing of the Iraqi government and has provided military assistance to the Palestinian resistance since Oct. 7. For this, the U.S. has carried out a terror campaign against Iraq over the past weeks, including multiple strikes against the PMF.
The U.S. imperial line has been that these strikes against Iraq are self-defense and only retaliation for recent PMF attacks on U.S. military bases in Iraq and Syria.
Oh, the poor billion-dollar U.S. military! Who will look out for them?
It’s laughable how the imperialist military beast justifies its crimes. There would not be PMF attacks on U.S. military bases in Iraq and Syria if there were no unwanted U.S. military bases in two sovereign nations. Further, there would not have been an escalation of PMF attacks on U.S. military bases if the Zionist entity (“Israel”) did not similarly escalate its genocidal efforts in Gaza.
Assassination of Soleimani
The strike that killed Al-Saeedi quickly invoked comparisons to the illegal Jan. 2, 2020, U.S. drone strike that murdered Iran Revolutionary Guard general and hero in the fight against ISIS, Qassem Soleimani.
In some sort of sick irony, that strike also killed the deputy chairman of the PMF at the time, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis. Then-President Donald Trump also claimed that this assassination was a matter of self-defense.
All U.S. military presence in Western Asia is a crime, as it only serves to spread violence in the furtherance of the Western oil and defense industry profits.
There is no justification. Oppressor violence in response to resistance and solidarity is not self-defense. It is just more oppressive violence.
These sort of targeted killings against government-affiliated officials by the U.S. are widely recognized, even amongst bourgeois institutions, as violations of international law, let alone human rights. Yet, the U.S. carries out these strikes with continued impunity.
As solidarity with Palestine continues to grow in the Arab and Muslim world, so will the imperialist crimes against humanity grow throughout the region. Workers and oppressed people across the world must continue to stand in solidarity and fierce resistance, even in the face of repression.
Long live Iraqi resistance to imperialism! Long live the Palestinian resistance! When people are occupied, resistance is justified!
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