04/04/06 Iraq: The Case for Bringing the Troops Home

Union Labor News April 4, 2006 Article

On Tuesday April 4, voters in twenty-three cities and villages across Wisconsin, including Madison, Monona, Mt. Horeb, Watertown, and Baraboo, will have a chance to vote in referendums on the Iraq war. The wordings are variations of "Should the US government immediately withdraw all US armed forces in Iraq?" The referendum movement hopes to send a strong message to Wisconsin’s politicians that it is time to bring our troops home. ‘Vote Yes’ advocates, including many local union members, feel there are major reasons to leave Iraq now.

The war has cost American and Iraqi lives, cut needed services at home, and weakened our domestic security. At current rates, by the April election, 2,400 American soldiers will have died and 18,000 will have been wounded. More than 100,000 Iraqi civilians will have been killed or wounded. We have already spent more than $350 billion on Iraq with combat expenses alone running at $7 billion a month. Our capacity to fight disasters at home has been crippled. Half the National Guard is in Iraq from states that suffer major hurricanes, tornadoes, forest fires, floods and other annual disasters. Our other homeland security needs are underfunded – our ports are not much safer than four years ago, our nuclear and chemical plants are inadequately protected, and our public health system – the first line of defense against pandemics and biochemical warfare – is in poor condition.

Our most basic human services have been cut every year of the war – including veterans services and benefits and basic programs for children, the disabled, and the elderly. Another 140 programs are slated for cuts or termination this year. The Iraq War costs have been added to our already bloated national debt. And lastly, our own political and moral beliefs have been damaged by the abuses of foreign prisoners and the attacks on basic civil liberties and the rule of law – all in the name of wartime circumstances.

Americans are a generous people who have sacrificed greatly and will "step up to the plate" where the goals are truly meritorious – as in World War II. So some of these costs would be tolerated or accepted if the Iraq war were truly helping the Iraqi people and ending the threat of terrorism to Americans. But the truth is quite different.

We know now there were no outside Arab nationalist or Islamic fundamentalist terrorists operating in Iraq before our invasion. Our occupation of Iraq has given the terrorists a training ground and an opportunity to fight in Iraq. In the summer of 2005, US government-funded research teams found that most of the new non-Iraqi guerrillas and terrorists came to Iraq after 2003 only because of the US occupation of an Arab or Islamic country.

These terrorists have a radically different agenda from the Iraqi Sunni Arab insurgents. The local fighters wage a more traditional guerrilla war campaign of resistance. The outsiders, according to US military commanders, constitute only 5-10 percent of the insurgents. Yet they are responsible for virtually all of the suicide bombings – including the suicide attacks on Shi’ite mosques. These are designed to provoke a civil war with the so-called "heretical" Shia population and prevent agreement between moderate Shias, Sunni’s and the ethnically different Kurdish population. Iraqi Sunni Arab leaders have made it clear that these foreign terrorists would not be tolerated, but for the fight against the occupiers.

The way the US and British occupation has been carried out changed what might have been a minor Sunni Arab resistance into one where large parts of the Shi’ite population have also turned strongly anti-American. Why? First, the US built 14 major, permanent bases in Iraq and highly placed officials offhandedly refer to a long-term US presence – in a country with 40 years of resistance to British occupation (1919-1958). Second, the military has waged a counter-guerrilla campaign that has brought hardship to the broad civilian population in major ways.

US urban warfare uses "overwhelming force", massive house-to-house searches, and targeted air support in dense urban neighborhoods against the insurgents. It has led to widespread civilian casualties, and residential destruction, and turned tens-of-thousands of innocent families against us.

Despite these operations, the results show no significant decline in the number of enemy combatants, the level of enemy violence, or the sabotage of Iraq industrial capacity. This sabotage targets oil pipelines, production facilities, electric power, communications grids, and water and sewage plants – whose outputs all remain well below prewar levels. Whether just or not, most Iraqis see the failure to rebuild the economic capacity of Iraq and restore a normal daily life as an American responsibility since "you are the occupiers". Now, they also see the growing possibility of a bloody civil war, which the US cannot prevent.

The US presence makes compromise harder among Iraqis and increases the probability of a bloody civil war. Why? Iraq is an artificial state beset by two major ethnic and religious splits. After W.W.I, the British engineered a forced marriage of central and southern Iraq with a northern region that is actually a part of ‘Kurdistan’, the homeland of 20 million Kurds. The Kurds want a country of their own. They have fought the British and then Arab Iraqi governments from the 1920’s on for independence.

The second split in Iraq is between the central region Sunni Arabs and the southern region Shi’ite Arabs. They continue to fight a thousand-year-old religious dispute as fundamental as the conflict between Catholics and Protestants during the Reformation and Counter-Reformation.

The occupation of Iraq and arrival of outside Sunni terrorists has fanned the flames of hatred for a simple reason. In a time of chaos, lawlessness and uncertainly, people turn to the most traditional sources of protection: In Iraq they are the still strong tribal ties and sectarian religious communities. With most Iraqi Arabs opposing the occupation, the longer the US stays in Iraq, the more the religious sectarians flourish and more moderate secular Iraqi groups get weaker. The latest parliamentary election results show this with stark clarity: Religious Shiites 48 percent, the Kurds 21 percent, tribal and religious Sunni’s 20 percent, the main secular parties 9 percent, and other groups at 2 percent. The US has nothing concrete to offer except to stand aside and let the Iraqis work it out.

The Bush administration’s record on the reconstruction of Iraq shames the American people. According to the UN Charter and Geneva Convention, the US, as the occupying power, is responsible for maintaining law and order and providing essential services – sanitation, health care, water, electricity, and jobs. Yet the main focus of US efforts is the oil industry. The billions allocated by Congress in 2003 to nonmilitary reconstruction projects are still not spent. The US has diverted much of the money to security. Much of the rest goes to multinational US based corporations like Halliburton whose US subcontractors have provided few jobs for Iraqis. In addition, US aid has been subject to massive theft and profiteering and has virtually no oversight.

US control over reconstruction efforts has frozen out many willing donor countries. A heavy-handed military presence in local projects has driven most private charities (NGOs) and UN agencies out of Iraq. Arab and Moslem governments are discouraged from participating because they do not want to be seen by their own populations as participants in the occupation.

A US military withdrawal and transfer of reconstruction management to the Iraqi people and their new government would allow a much greater international reconstruction effort, in which the US would be a welcome participant.

During the last year, a growing majority of Iraqis polled say they want the US to leave. A poll conducted by the British Ministry of Defense in September, 2005 found that 67 percent of Iraqis feel less secure because of the occupation, 72 percent have no confidence in the multinational force, and 82 percent are "strongly opposed" to the presence of coalition troops. Forty-five percent feel attacks against coalition troops are justified. Last November a coalition of Shiites, Sunni, and Kurdish leaders called for a timetable for withdrawal of US troops. By staying in Iraq, the US government is undermining a basic principle of the American people – the Right of Self-Determination.

Some people question the timing of the withdrawal. Why use the word "now" or "immediately"? Some supporters of the war say the referenda suggests a "cut and run" position. This is a ‘red herring’. Referendum supporters do not advocate the abandonment of weapons and a chaotic, panicked military exit. It took months to build up the invasion force; so it will take the same months, starting immediately, to leave in a safe and orderly fashion. The real question is ending the war ‘without delay’ versus finding ways to prolong it.

The example of President Richard Nixon should make the choice easier. He was elected President in 1968 on the promise to end the Vietnam War and bring the troops home. He kept on finding conditions and circumstances he said prevented withdrawal. US troops finally left Vietnam in April, 1975 – seven years and many thousands of casualties later. The choice is simple. If you want to end the war in Iraq vote YES on April 4; if you want to continue it until 2009 or later, vote NO.