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HOW TO GET OUT OF IRAQ
BY TOM HAYDEN
"When you’re in the middle of a conflict, you’re trying to
find pillars of strength to lean on,” An American officer said in
Iraq. With those words he provided a clue to ending the war:
Undermine the pillars of Pentagon policy through people power.
Those pillars — among them public cooperation, Iraqi
cooperation, congressional compliance, centrist caution, military
recruitment and U.S. allies — are weakening.
Public support for the war is down, as are the President’s
ratings. Antiwar Democrats are coming back. Military recruiting is
hitting a wall. The strategy of “Iraqization" is failing. The coalition
of the willing is disintegrating. America’s reputation is tattered.
Public sympathy towards Cindy Sheehan suggests a
crucial shift in America’s sensibility toward the losses. Usually
wars generate a public reluctance to withdraw without “victory"
so that the fallen shall not have “died in vain." In this case,
Sheehan has led much of the country through a grieving process
that demands the truth so that no others will die for hollow or
fabricated reasons.
Recognizing its weaknesses, the administration is on a
mission of perception management to gain time and resources.
Americans are now being promised that Iraq will have a new
constitution, democratic elections and, most importantly, that the
first troops may be home by the spring of the 2006 election year.
These gestures are the Bush administration’s responses
to the quandaries it is confronting on the battlefields of war and
domestic opinion. They are designed to extend the conflict while
appearing to begin disengagement. This ploy is nothing new;
we should remember that the Vietnam War continued for seven
years after President Johnson was pressured to resign and
peace talks begin.
"They just keep getting stronger, The New York Times
wrote when describing the Iraqi resistance. The Times went on
to confirm that over the past year the insurgents have inflicted
some 65 attacks on U S. and Iraqi troops each day, with
increasing sophistication and precision. Baghdad is “effectively
enemy territory with the ability to strike at will, and to shake off
the losses inflicted by American troops.” American casualties
cannot be concealed. In two months alone, 71 Americans were
killed in 700 attacks; more than 2000 Americans have been
killed, not counting hundreds of contractors. According to
Pentagon data, nearly 15,000 Americans have been wounded
in battle, more than half of them seriously. Tens of thousands will
return with serious mental problems.
U.S. troops cannot hold the territory they occupy — the
clearest contradiction faced by an occupying power trying to prop
up an unrepresentative regime against a nationalist resistance.
The training and deployment of Iraqi counter-insurgency troops
— Iraqization” — has failed so far, according to declassified
Pentagon reports. And Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld
says it may 4, 8, or 12 years — in other words, several more
U.S. Presidential cycles.
The most significant factor on the ground is the rise of
an Iraqi movement calling for U.S withdrawal and the end of the
occupation. Rather than welcoming such a development, the
administration and a media blinded by its own paradigms have
ignored the possibility of a peace process among Iraqis.
Congress should call for a peace envoy to begin
immediate peace talks with the Iraqi opposition after the historic
Cairo summit in November. The three-day meeting was the first
attended by leading Iraqi political parties as well as a delegation
linked to the insurgents, organized by former minister Ayham al-
Sammarae. Overcoming the initial opposition of Prime Minister
Ibrahim Jafari, the conference ended with a call for American
withdrawal and an endorsement of “nationalist resistance” to
foreign occupation.
The conference will resume in Baghdad in February,
where a stronger call for U.S. withdrawal is likely. The February
date is consistent with the four-month period that has been
established to accommodate Sunni demands.
It is clear that U.S. proposals for token Sunni inclusion
have failed, and that the peace deal emerging consists of incorp
orating the opposition into a new power-sharing arrangement.
If the deal is brokered, many Baathist officers will likely
be incorporated into the Iraqi security forces to protect their
populations. The Mahdi Army of Moktada al-Sadr, famous for two
uprisings against American troops, will be accepted as sharing
security responsibilities in areas they represent as well. Earlier
this year supporters of al-Sadr collected a million signatures
against the occupation in three weeks.
Iraqi elected officials have demonstrated their demand
for withdrawal twice before, in a letter from 100-plus parliamen
tarians in July 2005 — calling for the end of occupation and
complaining they were not properly consulted in the United
Nation's Security Council’s extension of the occupation — and
a unanimous September 2005 report by the regime’s committee
of sovereignty.
The rumblings within America’s client regime reflect a
widespread consensus on the ground. Surveys taken at the
beginning of 2005 show that 82% of Sunnis and 69% of Shiites
favored a near-term U.S. withdrawal. According to the State
Department’s own internal surveys, at least half of Iraqis
interviewed say they feel unsafe because of the presence
of American troops.
In all likelihood, the Bush Administration is struggling to
suppress even moderate voices against the occupation. After all,
how would the United States respond to a broad-based antiwar
movement in Iraq? Call a majority of Iraqis dupes of terrorism?
Most Americans should be relieved at the prospect of
peace talks among Iraqis, including the insurgents, aimed at
ending the debacle. The situation calls for a negotiated exit
strategy, not Rumsfeld's boastful assertion, “We have no exit
strategy, only a victory strategy."
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Nevertheless, the White House plays upon the signifi
cant misgivings many Americans feel about the consequences
of a sudden pullout. Since Bush has no exit plan, it is important
that peace advocates put one forward in the final battle for public
opinion.
A provisional exit plan has circulated as a petition to
Congress on several peace group websites. Its core guidelines
include:
~A demand that the United States disavow any plans for
permanent military bases or control of Iraqi oil.
~A declaration of intent to end the occupation in months,
not years, followed by an initial limited troop withdrawal by
December.
~A request that the United Nations take responsibility
for military monitoring and the task of economic reconstruction.
-The appointment of an independent peace envoy to
undertake the shift from the military model to one of conflict
resolution.
-Immediate peace talks with the Iraqi opposition,
including insurgents, to begin a political settlement.
If these proposals seem utopian at the moment, the
alternative is a continuing hell. The peace movement needs
to advocate a peace plan, demand hearings and debate from
Congress, and hold do-nothing politicians accountable.
Congressional Democrats are beginning to take up an
exit strategy, both to put the administration on the defensive and
to send a positive message to those who are against the war but
worried about the consequences of withdrawal.
The changed atmosphere in Washington is symbolized
by the public interest in the Downing Street hearings chaired by
Democratic Representative John Conyers of Michigan, the anti
war stances by a growing number of House Republicans and the
increasing number of co-authors of California Democrat Lynn
Woolsey’s antiwar resolution — from 14 to 128. Shortly afterward
Representative Maxine Walters (D-California) led a backroom
rebellion against Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s leadership,
forming an “out of Iraq" caucus of more than 60 members.
Tens of thousands of antiwar demonstrators descended
on Washington, D C. on September 24 for United For Peace &
Justice’s Anti-War Mobilization, which provided the peace move
ment an opportunity to further amplify its message. And though
the mainstream media attempted to ignore the demonstrations,
they pose a real complication to the administration when it seeks
another $80 billion supplemental appropriation sometime after
January 2006. At the moment, the reluctance of elected officials
to cut the war funds remains the Bush administration's strongest
pillar. But by next year's election their numbers and discontent
will rise, in direct relation to the voices of protest and frustration
they hear in their districts.
A key issue for the antiwar movement will be driving
home the budgetary costs of the war to local constituencies
in congressional districts. One billion dollars per week could
purchase health insurance for 46.4 million people, Head Start
enrollments for 27 million kids or 8.6 million four-year college
scholarships. Such figures are available up-to-the-minute for
every budget category for every state at CostOfWar.com. As
people learn the facts being kept from them, public support for
further funding will shrink.
Centrists, moderates or national security types are
unlikely to take a strong stand on withdrawal. It is more likely that
an antiwar majority will grow from the right and left of the political
spectrum. Together, critics from both sides of the aisle can over
come mainstream caution. The antiwar movement doesn't need
the editorial page of the New York Times if it has an alliance with
conservative members of Congress and their constituents, or as
one White House strategist warned, “crazies on the left and
crazies on the right meeting in the middle ".
The previous generation of the antiwar movement forced
an end to the draft That generation has become the parents of
today’s youth, a fact that deeply upsets a Pentagon trying to
erase the “Vietnam syndrome." “The Pentagon is especially
vexed by a generation of more activist parents who have no
qualms about projecting their own qualms upon their children,”
reports The New York Times.
The recruitment crisis is connected to the morale crisis
on the battlefield itself. Six thousand American soldiers are
AWOL, including 37 military recruiters.
Bush doesn’t have the political capacity to reinstate the
draft because that would dramatically broaden the antiwar move
ment. Nor does he have the political touch to convince hundreds
of thousands of military families that their sons and daughters
should fight a dubious battle because of a back-door draft. The
military itself is his weakest pillar.
One by one, the pillars supporting the War in Iraq are
toppling. We have all become prisoners, indefinitely detained by
a war that was supposed to be swift and cheap.
That doesn’t necessarily mean the war will end. It does
mean that the administration, in order to placate voters and buy
time in the coming election year, is likely to defuse the rising
opposition with partial withdrawals and grudging talks. But the
administration’s main goal appears to be to reduce the war’s
presence in our lives, to go “off camera, so to speak," as the
neoconservative Robert Kaplan advises. This is the Vietnam
strategy that was pursued by the current generation of Repub
licans in their formative years, when the likes of John Negro
ponte served under Henry Kissinger. It is pursued today in
Afghanistan and Colombia, wars with a minimal number of
American casualties that are too expensive — too boring
perhaps — for corporate media to cover.
Iraq is the great exception, the war that can’t be switched
off the television. It stands to be the illuminating experience for
this generation, the classroom in which the lessons of war,
empire and the costs at home will be learned or not.
The way is open for the peace movement — and
politicians in the Democratic Party if they choose — to offer an
exit strategy and an alternative vision of America’s needs to a
majority of Americans. Just as the end of the Vietnam War led
the way, at least for a decade, for movements supporting human
rights, alternative energy development, and open and demo
cratic government, so we are approaching the time when
progressives can offer real alternatives to a new generation
of Americans disillusioned by needless death in the service of
official lies.
Tom Hayden was a leading opponent o f the Vietnam
War. He was indicted, tried and finally acquitted on charges o f
conspiracy to riot during the 1968 Democratic Convention. He
later served 18 years in the California legislature. He is author
o f 12 books and currently teaches at Pitzer College. His article
is excerpted from In These Times and combined with another
article he wrote for CommonDreams. org.
WHAT TO DO FOR PEACE NOW
Democrats and Republicans should be competing
to support Iraqi talks at the beginning of the peace process.
Instead they are losing the initiative to the Iraqis themselves.
The steps to consider are these:
-Reduce U.S. troop levels by 25,000 by Christmas.
-Support the Arab League’s peace diplomacy, including
the call for a near-term withdrawal
-Assign a U.S. peace envoy to join the peace talks
immediately and encourage the February Arab summit.
-M ake peace diplomacy a higher priority than military
operations.
-Place our allies on notice immediately.
-End offensive American operations in cities.
-M ake clear that the U.S. intends to withdraw, keep no
permanent bases, and respect Iraqi control of Iraqi natural
resources.
-M ake clear that the U.S. is committed to an internationally
sponsored effort at postwar economic reconstruction, without
Halliburtons.
-Reduce tensions with Iran and Syria in exchange for their
support for a political solution.
-Adopt these policy guidelines in budget and policy by
January.
-TOM HAYDEN