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TechnoratiThe United States should not win in its war against Iraq. It should change its strategy to being just.
The United States was wrong to attack Iraq. Possession of weapons of mass destruction is not a justification, moreover Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction. Toppling Saddam Hussein is no justification; the imposition by a stronger nation of its political preference for the running of another nation's government has never been a legitimate basis for attack.
Every justification for the attack by the United States against Iraq leads to the same conclusion: the United States acted as an international delinquent, a violator of Iraqi sovereignty, and an international threat to peace.
So how could one even entertain the notion of winning a war for which there is no justification?
The thinking among the "leadership" of American society in trying to find a victorious exit from Iraq is awry. The United States has been the bad guy all along. It must now exit honorably. The elements of an honorable exit strategy should include the following:
1. Confession. Declare to the Iraqi people and the international community that the United States was wrong in conducting this war.
2. Apology. Apologize to the Iraqi people and the international community for its conduct of the war.
3. Reparation. Take responsibility for the repair of the damage caused by the war, and bring the people and the physical condition of Iraq back to the condition they would have been in had the United States not invaded Iraq. Iraqi families who have suffered the loss of lives or injuries should be compensated in amounts established by a neutral commission and fully funded by the United States.
4. Leadership. The United States should leave Iraq immediately and turn over its responsibility for reparation to an international coalition that will direct the rebuilding of Iraq.
5. Relinquish profits. The profits gained by U.S. companies and individuals as a result of the war should be turned over to the reparation effort.
6. Disengage from Iraqi affairs. The United States should make a legally binding commitment to refrain from any overt or covert attempt to affect the internal affairs of Iraq.
7. Accept accountability. U.S. individuals, including the highest-ranking civilian and military personnel, should be subject to the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court and to domestic courts to answer to war crimes charges.
This plan will not be supported by the U.S. public initially, because of its high price. But the plan will stop the cost from escalating further in terms of lives lost and injuries on all sides of the war, and the destruction of property.
The price will only go higher the longer this unjust war continues, and the repayment will eventually be meted out, if not willingly by the United States, then through continued terrorism throughout the lives of our children and their children, ad infinitum.
The continuation of this war will not resolve terrorism. If terrorism is to end, it will only come through a just peace. An end to U.S. government terrorism will decrease other forms of terrorism, and this, along with the elements above, can begin to build a foundation of justice as the basis for long-lasting peace.
Poka Laenui is executive director of Hale Na`au Pono, a Community Mental Health Center in Wai`anae, Hawai`i. He is active in the Hawai`i and international arena as a proponent for indigenous people's rights and for the decolonization of Hawai`i. www.opihi.com/sovereignty.
© 2007 YES! Magazine
26 Comments so far
Show AllWhy do we need to make an honourable exit when every single one of our actions have been dishonourable from the start. Why not just friggin exit. Lets stop pretending we are anything other than a violent, aggressive, brutal society hell bent on contnuing our own 'standard of living' at the expense of lesser brown-skinned human beings.
I would imagine that hell will have to freeze over before any of the seven points take place! So no one hold their breath! I know I won't. But then what do you expect from a bunch of greedy thugs? That's about all Bush and Company are and ever have been in the past. They appeal to the most base instincts in the American public! The 'kick ass' crowd that isn't bright enough to look beyond their own rabid political views to a world full of people out there who don't think our idea of democracy is worth a tinkers damn! It has been proven in the last 6 to 7 years this government doesn't have a clue what democracy is all about. So how could they possibly help anyone else along the road to it. If they did we wouldn't be in Iraq or Afghanistan either one. They were both doomed to failure before they ever started.
Thank you for the article. Anything short of this will continue the vicious circle of violence, retribution, and injustice.
The war is not a mistake, it was intentional, and it is wrong. Until we admit it we will not heal and progress.
www.NotOneMore.US - Pledge for Peace
To answer Starislon2's question, "What have we become?", we have become a corporatist state, a legal fiction without honor - or soul. All checks and balances have been sold or dismantled, all internal organs of a once great democracy have been devoured by the cancer of greed. Born of revolution, dying of incremental dictatorship, we the people will rise again only when our comatose electorate is driven from its slumber by the deprivation and retribution the horror of corporate war-making brings.
America did not enter Iraq honorably and has not behaved honorably during the occupation, so why in the world should we expect an honorable exit?
These are basically the same steps that George McGovern and William R. Polk advocated in their book "Out Of Iraq" in 2006, and they still apply. One responder made reference to the cost of such steps, but the cost would be far less than the millions we expend on a fruitless war effort each day that the mess in Iraq continues - - and that cost will only go up as time goes by; replacing the Humvees with the MRAPs will be two to three times as costly for one example; fuel for those vehicles will be more expensive. The longer that mess continues the more complicated and costly will be the logisitcs that are involved. The U. S. needs to wake up!
I would agree with all seven points by Poka Laenui.
I don't believe, even willing compliance by the US Government, would be enough to restore the honor of the United States, in the eyes of the the world.
Honor can only be restored by those who were dishonored, and who then provide forgiveness.
If someone murdered your family for profit, how long would it take you to forgive them?
The dishonored are all Iraqis, dishonored by America.
The dishonored are all Americans, dishonored by America.
The dishonored are all the other peoples, of The Coalition of the Willing, dishonored by America.
A corporate state, comprised of corporate entities, and being a legal fiction, has no honor. The concept of honor being replaced by the notion of profit.
What have we become?
Poka is right, and gets right back to basics. Those who focus upon the illusion of winning in Iraq are chasing the ghosts of Vietnam.
And as a matter of first principles, is it even possible under the just war thesis for an immoral, unjust invasion to EVER somehow convert into a moral cause during the ebb and flow of armed hostilities? I think not.
Maybe it helps to try on an Hawaiian geographical perspective for once, as we ponder the irony of Pax Americana in the death throes of the empire's twilight.
From the east to the west, the Caucasian European descendants of the Neanderthals and the Cro Magnons eventually turned their backs upon the Silk Road, and forcibly shipped thousands of Africans into the western hemisphere to wrest its riches from the native people there, in the name of spreading civilization.
In North America, from east to west the genocide spred on to the Pacific, even as skin color slavery was abolished by the sword. Manifest destiny sailed on with gunboats to Hawaii and the Phillippines, to the gates of Japan and China.
And then there was Iwo Jima and Hiroshima, the Chosin Reservoir in Korea, to be followed by the bloody quagmire of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.
American retrenchment turned out to be a mirage. Post-9/11, it was on to Afghanistan, and then at last to Iraq - the cradle of civilization between the Tigris and Euphrates renamed the Triangle of Death.
Uncle Sam has at last gone full circle.
Time to take the toys away from the boys.
Bill from Saginaw
I'm part of the public, and I support it.
This article was as concise a prescription for setting things right in Iraq as I have read to date. I have long advocated turning Bush, Cheney and company over to the ICC, but the author has covered more areas than the simple revenge I have advocated. Kudos.
Well said Poka Lainui, I agree with you, and at the same time I believe it would be appropriate for the U.S.A to renegotiate all First Nation's treaties which were foisted upon Aboriginals by force and all treaties which were negotiated in bad faith as well as honouring those treaties which were honourably agreed to by all parties.
Poka must be joking. The U.S. has no plan to get out of Iraq, honorable or dishonorable, until Iraq's oil peters out.
There is no honorable exit for dishonorable warmongers.
I was just thinking that this is the sanest article about Iraq I've ever read before I got to the credit and saw that it comes from someone working in Mental Health. I salute you for your clear thinking. If we as a country could do this it would be a major turning point in the evolution of us humans. I think of the reconciliations in Africa. I know people can change on a big scale like this. I will hold this as an ideal for our actions.
Look at scum like Larry Craig and ask yourself how realistic is a chance that any of our polititians would do any of the 7 points listed. Nice dreaming. Ben Franklin said, "He who lives for hope, dies farting!" Keep hoping; and farting!
Agree... if you were to ask people (outside of the US and Israel, I mean USrael) I guess the terms mostly associated with USA would be:
hypocrisy, torture, illegal invasion, mass killing, rogue nation, state terrorism, ....
Using the words "Honor" and "USA" in the same sentence is the nadir of hypocracy.
How can anyone scrape together on iota of HONOR in a war that was started based on the most mendatious of lies, and fought in order to steal a countries natural resourses, simply because they are a differengt color and religion than the rulers of the USA
I wrote to David Brooks over 2 years ago, in response to an editorial he had in the NY Times wherein he basically said the American people want to "kick ass" not leave Iraq, and I said that the US first needed to apologize to the world community for it's act of naked aggression against a defenseless, soveriegn nation - FIRST AND FOREMOST - and THEN BEG for forgiveness and the help needed in correcting the mess that the US SINGLE-HANDEDLY created. Of course, as delusional as the Harvard think-tank, "tough guys" are today, in 2005 they were TRULY insane and couldn't imagine ANYONE apologizing, let alone the frat-boys running the White House!
No nation that commits the grotesque acts of aggression, torture, and murder against a defenseless nation without any justification or sober reasoning, such as the Bush administration did to Iraq, can ever HOPE to correct it's malevlovance without FIRST apolgizing and being humbled, and then proceeding in a united way with honorable goals (something that the architects of this war do not now, nor have they ever, had)!
Maybe Bush doesn't even know what is going on. If he's ignorant of the true facts, how could we find a great deal of falult with him? The poor boob has a lot of worries on his mind besides a little civil disturbance in some far off Arab country. Give'em a break fo rcrying out loud and write about something important, ___ like OJ being arrested again, or lead based paint on Barbies friggin bed posts.
Even with the seven steps, it is impossible to be honourable once you commit war crimes and atrocities.
What's sad to me is that his plan was a good idea even back in 2003. So many lives ruined and lost, so much money and priceless destruction. All because America is more stubborn than smart, and more prideful than ethical.
"This plan will not be supported by the U.S. public initially, because of its high price."
And yet this plan is precisely what the goal of the anti-war movement should be -- that, together with an unconditional withdrawal of Israel from the occupied territories.
This sounds great. For more pragmatic details in a similar vein, check out George McGovern and William Polk's "Out of Iraq: A Practical Plan for Withdrawal Now." Write your congressmen and senators and tell them to read it.
An exit from Iraq - honorable or not - is possible only if Americans are able to see things as they are, rather than as the power to be want us to see. So, here is my take
Bush: the front man
Cheney/Military industrial complex/Israli lobby: the real force behind the war in Iraq
Democrats: war enablers
Media: complicit
Troops: perpetrators (of war and war crimes)
Americas: clueless
Iraqis: the main victims
I realize, my views are not going to be very popular, especially regarding the troops. But hey, if you want to go thorough life with ideological and emotional blinders, you are welcome...
Don't worry. Bush and Cheney have a plan to stop you from obsessing over their war crimes in Iraq. They are going to get you to start thinking about their war crimes in Iran.
In general, it can always get better and it can always get worse, but with Bush and Cheney in power, it can only get worse.
Even doing this would take years to restore the integrity of the United States on the world stage. It will take GENERATIONS before the cloud of distrust will clear.
The United States has thrown away it's honor, integrity, morality, and humanity for money. It has shown the world that it's education level is pitiful. Most of the war supporters can't even find their own country on a map, much less Iraq or Iran.
The article's plan is merely the very first step on a long, LONG, road to salvation.
If I could figure out how to become the benevolent dictator of the US these seven priorities would be executed pronto!
How can these priorities be adopted when we have the best Congress money can buy? If Congress implemented prioity #5 (relinquish profits) their campaign contributions would dry up.