What solidarity requires.

• Author: Stork, Joe
• Position: Cover Story - Cover Story

A basic component of the movement in opposition to war in Iraq is a sense of solidarity with the beleaguered people of that country. This impulse toward solidarity--and the strong desire to prevent harm to Iraqis--is essential. But solidarity with the people of Iraq ought to be more complicated than simple opposition to war. The movement against the war must also express this solidarity by clearly opposing the rule of the present government in Baghdad, a government that continues to be responsible for systematic and brutal crimes against its citizens.

A U.S.-initiated war may not be the best way to accomplish the goal of ending the tyranny of Saddam Hussein's government or to produce a political authority that guarantees and promotes respect for basic human rights. But solidarity with Iraqis requires a commitment to support their struggles to achieve such rights, and that means taking seriously the need to protect vast numbers of Iraqis from the ongoing depradations of this government. Anything less betrays an opportunism on the part of opponents of the war that mimics the opportunistic invocation of human rights by the proponents of war.

Iraq's human rights record is, without question, among the very worst in the world. The current government, since it came to power in 1968, has relentlessly suppressed basic civil and political rights in the country and shares responsibility for the humanitarian disaster caused by more than a decade of sanctions. The wars caused by Iraqi aggression against Iran and then Kuwait, the U.N.-imposed sanctions, and the government's systematic political repression have caused massive suffering and dislocation among virtually all sectors of Iraq's population. As many as five million Iraqis--more than 20 percent of the country's population--now live abroad. The Norwegian Refugee Council recently estimated that there are 700,000 to one million internally displaced persons in Iraq.

In Iraq under Saddam Hussein, no one--Arab or Kurd, Sunni or Shi'a, man or woman--can exercise basic political rights, such as freedom of expression or freedom of association. Politics itself has been entirely criminalized. The government has imposed mandatory death sentences for nonviolent political "crimes" such as recruiting a current or former Ba'th Party member into any other political organization, or publicly insulting the president or the party. There are no due process protections, such as the right to a fair trial or to have...