Millions of Iraqis Demand US Ouster; Western Media Conceals Size of Turnout

Crescent International

Jumada' al-Ula' 29, 1441 2020-01-24

Daily News Analysis

by Crescent International

As millions of people took to the streets in Iraq to protest the presence of US occupation forces, the Western corporate media was “busy” playing down the massive anti-US protests.

The BBC tried to underplay the massive numbers by using the misleading headline for millions of Iraqis as merely “huge crowds”. The CNN website meanwhile concealed the event behind subjective anti-Iran propaganda pieces.

Nevertheless, in the age of social and alternate media, facts quickly decimated the neo-colonialist narrative pushed by the corporate media, presenting the pictures and videos of massive turnout in Iraq.

As millions of Iraqis marched through Baghdad shouting, “Yes to Sovereignty!” and "Get out, get out, occupier!" the beginning of the political anti-US regional storm was clearly gathering steam.

The US will face stiff resistance across all segments of Iraqi society if it fails to heed the people’s call to get out.

The Western corporate media presented the march as a protest only by supporters of prominent Iraqi Islamic leader, Sayed Muqtada al-Sadr, in order to frame the protests as non-representative of the entire Iraqi society.

Even though al-Sadr was the first political leader to call for the million-man march against the illegal US presence in Iraq, most of Iraq’s leading political forces backed his call.

Had the protests in Iraq been against Islamic Iran, for instance, the corporate media would have turned it into top news with screaming headlines for several days.

This sort of mainstream media duplicity is evident when one compares their exaggerated reporting about a few hundred anti-Islamic protestors in Iran, following the Ukrainian airline tragedy.

The small anti-Islamic protests in Iran were milked for selfish political gains and presented in blaring headlines across the Western media landscape.

The confident presence of millions of participants against US military presence in Iraq reflects the fact that after spending trillions of dollars, Washington lacks the support of the Iraqis and has clearly lost both the hard and soft war.

The ability of Iraqi political forces to mobilize millions of people—one estimate put the number at 4 million—to protest peacefully shows that the Iraqis, with Iran’s help, have managed to significantly disrupt the terrorist activities of Daesh.

If Daesh were at their operational level, they would have launched terrorist attacks against the massive but peaceful crowds, as they have done in the past.

Thus, Washington and its surrogates can no longer claim that they need to occupy Iraq in order to fight Daesh, which the US created.

The mass protests in Iraq signal the beginning of the Islamic movement’s strategic political response to the assassination of General Qassem Soleimani.

The regional paradigm has clearly shifted.

Demanding the expulsion of the US is no longer an alternative political view but a very mainstream demand of Muslims in the region. A demand they are no longer afraid to express and act upon.