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TechnoratiWhy We Must Leave Iraq
As Congress gathers to hear the reports of Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker, no amount of Administration spin can hide the ugly reality in Iraq. A surge that should never have been tried and that could never have succeeded has predictably failed. While violence in some parts of Baghdad has declined to June 2006 levels, the number of deaths from political violence has increased in Iraq as a whole. Ethnic cleansing has proceeded apace, and the humanitarian catastrophe, already staggering, has worsened. Some 2.5 million Iraqis are now refugees in neighboring countries. Another 2 million are internally displaced. And despite Bush Administration claims to the contrary, most of Iraq's cities and towns still lack regular electricity, sanitation and other basic services, and suffer from economic depression. Up to half of Iraqis are unemployed.
The stated purpose of the surge was to create enough security in and around Baghdad to give Iraqi politicians breathing room to pursue reconciliation. But with the exception of some very minor recent concessions on de-Baathification, the Shiite-led government has stuck to positions that have prevented most Sunnis from participating in the government. Moreover, it is increasingly difficult to speak of an Iraqi government that has power or authority outside Baghdad's Green Zone. Real power resides with the militias on the ground, which are competing for resources and influence throughout much of Iraq. Even within the Green Zone, some seventeen ministries have withdrawn their support from the government and increasingly act as independent fiefdoms handing out resources to loyal constituents.
The surge has done nothing to change this--in large part because the United States, despite its sizable military and substantial economic largesse, is powerless to coerce or cajole change in the centers of power. Any gains the surge has produced may be gone tomorrow, like a footprint washed away by the tide.
The surge has thus been a cruel hoax on the American people and on our servicemen and -women (more than 600 of whom have been killed and 4,000 injured since the surge was announced). It is yet another Administration bid to stave off public pressure to withdraw and thus to avoid admitting failure. This irresponsibility--this morally indefensible sacrifice of American and Iraqi lives in pursuit of unachievable goals--must end. The Iraq War has long been lost, and it is time to bring it to a close. We continue to believe that a complete withdrawal of US forces, carried out as quickly as possible, is the best course of action for the United States, Iraq and the region.
The question before Congress and the nation should not be whether to give the surge more time but how best to end the occupation. So far the Administration has been able to thwart Congressional efforts to force a withdrawal--first with the surge and now with its dire warnings of a disaster in store for Iraq, the region and US interests if we withdraw. Also troubling, several Democratic presidential candidates seem to have bought into these worst-case scenarios and have begun to slow their timetable for withdrawal, adding new conditions for a pullout. Some are even calling for keeping a sizable residual force in Iraq or neighboring countries indefinitely. Congress must resist White House claims about the surge's "success" and deny additional funds for the occupation, instead pursuing reconciliation and reconstruction, at home and abroad. As the Administration presses its PR offensive for an extended surge and open-ended occupation, it is critically important that we let our representatives know we're fed up with the war and want the troops home--now. Otherwise, Congress is unlikely to buck White House pressure.
Those who support a residual US force in Iraq argue that a complete withdrawal would hamper our ability to deter Al Qaeda attacks, sectarian atrocities and regional war. We believe that any good accomplished by a residual US force would be outweighed by the harm it would do.
Consider the question of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, which at most has a few thousand fighters. Local Sunni groups tolerated them in the past because they were allies against the occupation. Now that the Sunni tribes expect a US withdrawal, they have begun to turn against Al Qaeda. And if the Sunnis aren't able to eliminate the jihadis, the Shiites and the Kurds will, with the blessing if not the outright help of neighboring countries like Syria, Turkey and Iran, which do not want Al Qaeda to gain a foothold in the area. And as regional expert Flynt Leverett has pointed out, conventional ground troops are useless for counterterrorism missions. A residual force in Iraq (or in neighboring Kuwait) would further inflame popular opinion against the United States in the Arab and Muslim worlds and be a boon to jihadi recruitment.
As for intervening to stop sectarian atrocities, US military forces in much larger numbers have not been able to stop the violence that has claimed nearly 2,000 Iraqis a month or to prevent the ethnic cleansing that has displaced millions. It is not clear why a smaller force would be any more effective. The sad fact is that much of the ethnic cleansing has already taken place--on our watch. To be sure, a US withdrawal may lead to an intensification of the civil war, as different factions make a grab for power. But stability among these factions can be established only after a US withdrawal. Indeed, any US forces will be destabilizing because one group or another will try to draw them into the battle on their side. Only after we commit to a complete withdrawal will there be any hope of international mediation and a lasting settlement based on a balance of forces not subject to US favoritism and power maneuvers, suspected or real.
As to the concern that a complete withdrawal will lead to regional war, as different countries intervene in Iraq's civil war: This is a naívely self-centered view of the Middle East and its problems. For all its democratic and human rights shortcomings, the region is resilient and capable of managing conflict. It survived fifteen years of civil war in Lebanon and almost a decade of brutal war between Iran and Iraq. It will survive the withdrawal of US forces from Iraq. It was the Saudis and Syrians who in 1989 brokered an end to the war in Lebanon, not us. And Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia have the greatest stake in keeping the Iraqi conflict contained and therefore can be counted on to control their allies in Iraq once US forces withdraw.
More important, a commitment to a complete US withdrawal would open the way for international mediation and peacekeeping efforts, under the auspices of the United Nations, the Arab League or the Organization of the Islamic Conference. Indeed, it may be the only way to develop a regional concert of powers that can work with Iraqis to stabilize the country and control the conflict. Only by removing US forces and ending all claims to permanent bases can Washington increase the possibility that other countries will assist Iraq. The best way to prevent regional destabilization is to refocus our regional efforts and help Iraq and its neighbors cope with the humanitarian crisis we helped create. We can begin by helping to organize assistance for Syria, Jordan and Lebanon to resettle their Iraqi refugees. We can press Gulf countries like Kuwait and Saudi Arabia not to buy US weapons and host US troops but to open their doors to their Iraqi neighbors. And we can talk with Syria and Iran about our common interest in an Al Qaeda-free region instead of threatening to overthrow their governments.
Not only is withdrawing from Iraq in our national interest; it is also the moral, responsible thing to do. There is one way to atone for our illegal invasion and reckon with the human catastrophe our occupation has caused: End the occupation and abandon the pretense that only American power can bring order and democracy to the region. Then there will be a fair test of the Iraqis' willingness to settle their differences and of the international community's ability to assist them. And then we will be able to prove our nonimperial claims and play a constructive role in the region and world.
© 2007 The Nation
18 Comments so far
Show AllWe should leave Iraq because Americans have murdered enough innocent people. Americans have been following an idiot, George Bush, into a Corporate quagmire of oil theft, destruction of private property, empire building, deception, and imperalism.
Imagine China and Russia uniting to occupy the United States. Imagine these invaders changing the Constitution and setting in place a communist ideology to govern Americans. Sounds scary does'nt it. Well this is what has occured in Iraq. The United States, under the control of a few has manipulated the Public into confiscation of Iraq.
The People of the United States, not the representatives, must now leave Iraq, of course provide restitution to rebuild and turn our attention to creating true prosperity in America.
If you listen closely to the comments of most wealthy in the United States, you hear the same tone. " Destroy those Evil People". The pot calling the kettle black.
The Superpower that takes advantage of defenseless nations around the world. Our representatives are cowards. Why don't we take on nations with equal arsenals? Why do we force other nations to join in our folly?
Common people must unite to end the fiasco that the idiots have created. Immediately following this departure, we must confiscate all of the gain realized by the participants of this scheme, president, vice president present and former secretary of state, current and former chief of the CIA and all other agencies participating in this atrocity. The time has come.
One of the less important reasons why Iraq occupation must end is that Iraqis reject the U.S. brand of democracy. Thanks to their superior intelligence, they clearly see that what you have even in the U.S. itself is a sham and not democracy. In fact, this is so obvious that one must be a complete idiot not to notice it.
Look, assuming the U.S. does not sink further into fascism, in about a little more than a year the Americans will be driven like herd to vote for one of the two candidates that have already been chosen for them behind close doors: one a Democrat and the other a Republican, both representing the same entity. What a marvelous democracy. Better keep it at home. Iraqis are no fools.
Of course, fools would argue that they are always free to vote for a third party or for any other person they want to. True. But the fools should also know that a third party candidate, or any other person they decide to vote for other than the two already chosen for them, has as much chance to become president as themselves, were they to write their own names on the ballot. Why so? Because your system is rigged to keep you ignorant forever.
On top of that you have your (sic) charlatan representatives actually elected by campaign contributors such as corporations or one type of lobby or another, such as AIPAC, to name just one.
So, you see, for Bush or any other American to claim to have democracy or wanting to export the same, is outright disingenuous and hypocritical. Iraqis see it plainly, and want you to leave and take your democracy with you. Thanks, but no thanks.
The Iraqis could incorporate their people with equal shares of non-negotiable stock in all their public resources and make the oil companies compete for purchasing their resources instead of killing and stealing from them.
And then we will be able to prove our nonimperial claims and play a constructive role in the region and world.
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[N]onimperial claims? I must have woken up in a parallel universe. Or is this a sophisticated distinction between say, "imperialist" and "hegemonic"? Such an abstruse and nuanced distinction may well be beyond my limited intellect, learning, and powers of comprehension.
Because to a layman like Your Humble Narrator, this final sentence suggests that the US is at heart an altruistic and humble nation, at worst capable of well-meaning blunders in its intercourse with other nations. In my dubious reading, this closing suggests that once the US owns up to its unfortunate excesses and errors in Mess-o-potamia, and turns around the excellent adventure as recommended, the world will see that the US always only wants to help, and is committed to cleaning up the wreckage it created, no strings attached. And presumably we'll again begin to Feel the International Love.
It's no wonder that I'm on the wrong side of the Cindy Sheehan question. Because any one of Cindy's sentences makes more sense to me than the premises of this entire thoughtful editorial. Guess I'll have to pay closer attention to history and current events!
Israel, the Israeli lobbies...i.e.AIPAC, and their assorted ilk...and the treasonous neocons among us.i.e...Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, David Feith, Elliott Abrams, William Kristol, and the rest of their fellow monkies, are what's keeping us in Iraq and who got us there in the first place, together with the main stream media which their kind control.These treasonous individuals who have bitten the very hand that feeds them should be tried for treason, for war crimes, and for getting our country involved in an immoral, illegal war, paid for with American treasure and with the blood of our courageous American soldiers.
withdrawal without some residual force will leave open the door to genocidal annihilation of scale minorities. I cannot support this, (as this is already happening and we should be focusing on political stabilization through decentralizing power, not divide and conquer, but decentralization).
Calling a withdrawal without (1) provisions for residual military training of Iraqis, (2) a focus on political decentralization (we ourselves were a political confederation before we were an economic constitution), and (3) support for democratically engaged Iraqi political parties against nondemocratically engaged political parties (Al Qaeda) "a fair test of the Iraqis' willingness to settle their differences and of the international community's ability to assist them," strikes me as extremely naive and a complete misuse of the word 'fair'. This is not what happened in the wake of many political revolutions where hierarchical power (for example like Iraq, where the power structure is centralized in Baghdad) was redistributed on a sectarian basis- as is the case in Iraq. (Consider for example, the violent political revolution premised on sectarian reapportionment of hierarchical power that established the United States: "The exodus of roughly one hundred thousand loyalists from what became the United States between 1775 and 1784, often after the expropriation of their property, eliminated perhaps one-third of the thousand largest prerevolutionary wealthholders." (Kevin Phillips, 'Wealth and Democracy: A Political History of the American Rich', (New York: Broadway, 2002), 12.)
There's nothing 'fair' about surrending people to a genocidal situation.
I agree with withdrawal- timelines and benchmarks-, but it doesn't exempt us from having minimum responsiblities for (1) those whose country we have demolished, and (2) the president (albeit the other half elected) of our country. I don't see how the rest of the world could possibly see genocide on the heels of American soldiers that way. I agree with those who say we need to make sure the door to genocide is closed before the last American leaves.
"More important, a commitment to a complete US withdrawal would open the way for international mediation and peacekeeping efforts, under the auspices of the United Nations, the Arab League or the Organization of the Islamic Conference." This is just intellectual masturbation at its finest. No better than the administration's rationale for why 'democracy' would succeed in Iraq in 2002. What happened in Darfur? Let's be realistic about other countries stepping in and how they step in.
Let's oppose funding the war, (The pentagon can't redistribute some cheese from the star wars program over poland to provide body armor in Iraq?) and let's oppose genocide. I fail to see how those are contradictory goals.
We have no representative form of government any more or Bush-Cheny would be thrown out of office immediately for continuing this illegal occupation when the nation clearly wants a quick end to it. Everyone with half of a brain knows they are just prolonging it to get out of office "protecting" us with no thought for our soldiers or the Iraqi people. Our nation is being bled dry with this miserable mess they got us into with no possibility of success, but all we hear is throw more billions and more men at it for the benefit of a few greedy men and corporations. If Bush would just level with us and admit he knows nothing about how to govern, and is only doing what he has been told, he would look like more of a man.
No where do I see an apology for our demolishment of a country that had not harmed us.
That should be the starting point.
the high moral ground indeed.
compelling and convincing.
too bad the president is a maniac. this is a determining factor that is not included with the math here. that's important because the government takes place in the real world and not the world of academe.
seeing that the war can almost totally be attributed to him, w, singularly, he should factor into the resolve, shouldn't he? the government, as a concept, is morally bankrupt and complicit, but it was w who started the war. as w has demonstrated over and over again the government is now without consequence.
we note that there are crucial and debilitating problems in the government but the war belongs to w. and he wants to keep going. not only in iraq but also now on to iran.
but, look, please, for a magazine as prestigious as the nation to write a piece like this at a time when the government is spending uncounted billions upon billions of dollars to erect those proverbial 40 air bases in the region seems to be, well, silly.
these bases, which will take hundreds of thousands of persons to man, speak to me about an enduring presence. wouldn't you agree?
so enough with this withdrawal nonsense.
what is more alarming about the bases is that they are not in iraq but rather the create a kind of "box" shape that goes loosely from the caspian basin south include certain parts of saudi arabia (where the big oil is) over through the uar and up through kuwait and then, by gosh and by darn, iran.
it is a forward looking box that presumes a lot of political changes all over the region.
it is the 800 pound gorilla of your humane piece i am afraid.
you must know in your hearts that its not going to happen.
how about this: the us should get out of iraq because that is what 90%, or thereabouts, of the iraqi people (with the exception of the kurds), have repeatedly told you to do so. the numbers are consistent geographically and ethnically.
given that, what kind of sane rationale could exist "in the name of the iraqis" other than getting out. i agree. but its not going to happen is it? not until folks like you and others begin to widen the reportage to include the personal dynamics and the military realities.
tick tockj, tick tock
As far down the information highway we are, it's hard to figure out Iraq. If you connect the dots one way, it looks like OBL needs the US in Iraq to build a base of ops, and W is playing his game by killing Iraqis. W needs OBL as an excuse to secure by force permanent access to the oil for the multi-nationals. The oil cos nor the Arabs nor the Russians care about the expense, death or destruction because they profit from $76 oil and can pump it out of either a functioning feifdom or a militarized wasteland. Most of the American people don't care enough to even call their congressman, let alone change their habits of consumption. Bush is paving the road to his residential library with the blood and guts of our soldiers---typical for a man who had someone else go to Nam for him. Arms dealers are loving it. Makes Iran stronger. More war, more profit.
Our flag officers don't care about their troops enough to tell W to put it back in his pants.
Where can we get different dots?
Great sadness.
Declaring an end to the (illegal) occupation is NOT withdraw, and the Dems best start reframing their plan in such a way if they ever hope to sway more Americans. WMD are, er, gone, Saddam is dead, and, however imperfect or unstable, a sovereign government has been elected. Congrats, Dear Leader, you won, whatever. Now go pose for some pics while we bring our troops home and set about the task of making the world better the right way.
P.S. - Note to "The Nation" - y'all should be hitting the campuses and distributing your mag, or a version of such, for FREE! A la "The L.A. Weekly," or the Dallas Morning News "Quick," get some Blue ad support, bands of interns, and start getting your message out there beyond your choir and en masse.
"give them up for war crimes prosecution and sentencing"
Do you guys say that stuff because it feels good, or are you SO out of touch with reality you actually think it's any more possible than dropping a stone and having it fly upwards.
a once proud publiction lurches into irrelevance...
The Nation editors lend legitimacy to the criminal enterprise, Iraq Adventure Park, Inc., by documenting its progress or lack thereof in its staggering aimless activities.
There is not an ounce of legitimacy in any initiative ever taken by the criminal cabal in the White House. Impeach the hell out of them, and everything they stand for, and then give them up for war crimes prosecution and sentencing.
"There is one way to atone for our illegal invasion and reckon with the human catastrophe our occupation has caused: End the occupation and abandon the pretense that only American power can bring order and democracy to the region."
That's atonement? Atonement requires war crime tribunals and payment of reparations at the bare minimum. Just leaving is far short of atonement.
We must get out---but the White House and its supporters will no doubt ramp up their warmongering in an effort to overwhelm the many legitimate and compelling arguments against "staying the course." For those interested in a psychological analysis of why this warmongering "works," I 've recently completed a 10-minute online video entitled "Resisting the Drums of War." It examines how the Bush administration has promoted the misguided and destructive war in Iraq by targeting five core concerns that often govern our lives--concerns about vulnerability, injustice, distrust, superiority, and helplessness. Looking ahead, the continuing occupation of Iraq--or an attack on Iran--will likely be sold to us in much the same way. The video examines these warmongering appeals and offers some suggestions on how to counter them. It's available for viewing HERE.
"A residual force in Iraq (or in neighboring Kuwait) would further inflame popular opinion against the United States in the Arab and Muslim worlds and be a boon to jihadi recruitment."
Never forget, one of the motives of those behind the 9/11 atrocity was to force the US to remove the infidel troops it had stationed in the holy land of Saudi Arabia. The Busheviks duly obliged by moving them en masse to Iraq.
The Administration isn't keeping us in Iraq; Congressional Republicans are doing that.
The surge is their way of stalling so no pullout takes place while a Republican President is in the White House; that would make it obvious to the American people that Republicans were responsible both for all the consequences of invading, as well as all the consequences of withdrawing.
Instead responsibility for the war will be dropped in the laps of the Democrats. The Democrats aren't 'going along'; they have no way to prove what I'm describing is true, and they know Republicans would insist Democrats were saying it for political reasons if they tried.
Every American knows Congressional Republicans are keeping us in this war; and they are keeping us in this war for the same reason they got us into this war; power, political power, money, oil.
Senator John Warner appears to have decided he's not going along for the ride.
American citizens who are Republicans need to contact their representatives in Congress today and tell them they don't want to go along for the ride.
This war is continuing today, because American citizens, who are Republicans, are not insisting that their representatives stop it. In parts of America, where American citizens are insisting that the war be stopped, their representatives are acting to do so.
It's called democracy; it's a system of government, all of us have chosen for our country.