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Stop the Wars by Getting Out of Iraq
George McGovern and William R. Polk have written a 142-page book, Out of Iraq: A Practical Plan for Withdrawal Now (Simon and Schuster Paperback, 2006), in which they argue that, given the horrors unleashed on the people of Iraq since the U.S. invasion and occupation, the only moral course is withdrawal, along with the pledge to help fund the country’s reconstruction. (See ‘What About the Iraqis?” by David Graham, Catholic Peace Fellowship Newsletter, January 2007, p. 3.) These ways out of war are “blue printed” in the October 2006 issue of Harper’s Magazine, which is a reprise of Chapter 5 of the book. (Interestingly enough, many of these suggestions were presented by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) on his 90-day plan to end the occupation during the 2004 presidential primaries. Kucinich, who was the only candidate to vote against the war in Iraq, was dismissed by the Democratic Party’s centrist leaders and he came in fourth in the primaries behind Kerry, Edwards and Dean.) George Packer, who championed the invasion in 2003, writing about the “Anti-war Democrats’ Iraq Delusions” in the November 27, 2006 issue of the New Yorker, ridicules former Presidential candidate and Senator George S. McGovern for laying out a plan “that amounts to a series of non-sequiturs: American withdrawal, followed by evaporation of the insurgency, followed by an influx of foreign police, followed by American-funded reconstruction” (p. 83). Parker has only read the Harper’s article covering Chapter 5, but why staying in Iraq is not an option and the plan for withdrawal in Chapter 5 makes sense can only be understood in the preceding chapters: “What is Iraq, and Who are the Iraqis?,” “The Effects on Iraq of the American Invasion and Occupation,” and “Damage Report: The Impact on America of the Iraq War.” Unlike Packer and other Americans who have become “instant experts” on the Middle-East and “Islamo-Facism” since March 20, 2003, the other author of Out of Iraq, William R. Polk, is a genuine scholar, fluent in the languages, histories and cultures of the Middle East and Iraq. Packer and other liberal defenders of Liberation and Democracy accuse anti-war Democrats of failing to take the wider, global battle against Islamic fanaticism seriously. The only people qualified to speak on the matter, it would seem, are those who got it wrong initially. You and your kind were wrong to be right; we were right to be wrong. (See “What About the Iraqis?” by D. Graham.) Spending on Iraq needs to be directed to a managed exit, protecting American troops while rebuilding Iraq, providing basic services and a stabilizing force—all of which may diminish the various insurgencies and terrorist activities more than escalating the war. McGovern and Polk recommend that international troops—preferably Muslims and under the U.N. umbrella, but paid for by the United States—try to keep the peace during the transition to independence. The American subvention should be paid to the Iraqi government, which would then “hire” the services on a government to government basis. The vast amount of equipment that the American military now has in Iraq, particularly transport and communication, would be turned over to the new multi-national force rather than shipped home or destroyed. Only if American respects the fundamental right of people in Iraq, despite their sectarian differences, to determine their own future can America’s reputation in the world-community, so grievously harmed by the Iraq war, be reconstructed. But, as Lieutenant General William Odem, the former director of the National Security Agency and a fierce opponent of the war put it, “No Iraqi leader with enough power and legitimacy to lead the country will be pro-American” (Out of Iraq, p. 122). Many Americans believe that Iraqis are basically barbarians who cannot manage their lives or their country. Fouad Ajami in his latest book depicts the benefits of occupation as a “gift” that ungrateful Iraqis are incapable of accepting: The Foreigner’s Gift: The Americans, the Arabs, and the Iraqis in Iraq. Echoing this mantra of President Bush are the many “muscular centrists” of the Democratic Party such as Senators Hillary Clinton and Joseph Lieberman. One can picture Bush in full-battle gear, cradling an M-16, while standing over a prostrate Arab, labeled “Iraq Govt” with the caption reading, “We’ll stand down when . . . the Iraqi Government stands up . . . On the other hand, Iraqis and archeologists compare the devastation of Iraq by the Americans to the invasions of the Mongol hordes, circa 1232, which decimated Baghdad, the cultural jewel of Islam. When they entered Babylon, American troops filled sandbags with archeological fragments and dug trenches through unexcavated areas while tanks and bulldozers crushed slabs of 2,600-year-old paving. Tallil Air Base, with a Burger King, Pizza Hut, and mini-Wal Mart, arose over the destruction of the famous dragons of the Ishtar Gate, the brick façade of the palace of Nebuchadnezzar II, and a Greek Theater from the era of Alexander the Great. McGovern and Polk recommend that America’s most prestigious archeological institution, The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, assist in the restoration of the sites American troops have damaged. Americans should not wish to go down as yet another barbarian invader of this ancient land, long referred to as “the cradle of civilization.” An international police force—drawn from Arab and Muslim countries—would have a firm date of two years for withdrawal and during this period would be slowly but steadily cut back. The breakdown of public order will never be remedied by American forces and their private “guns-for-hire,” pursuing a “divide and conquer” policy. (See Graham, “What About the Iraqis?”) While the temporary international police force completes its work, the creation of a permanent national force, emanating from neighborhoods, villages, and tribal home guards, must be an Iraqi task. There may be instances of “warlordism,” but only a central government police can possibly hope to control these militias, which have been manipulated against each other by the Pentagon. America has no useful role to play in these affairs, as experience has made perfectly clear. In fact, the American withdrawal package should include provision of $1 billion to help the Iraqi government create, train, and equip such a force. This is roughly the cost of four days of the occupation (Out of Iraq, p. 102). Despite the administration’s endless propaganda about bringing freedom and democracy to the people of Iraq, most of the citizens who have come into contact with our armed forces (and survived) have had their lives ruined. The courageous, anonymous young Iraqi woman who runs the Internet Web site Baghdad Burning wrote on May 7, 2004: “I don’t understand the ‘shock’ Americans claim to feel at the lurid pictures from Abu Ghraib prison. You’ve seen the troops break down doors and terrify women and children . . . curse, scream, push, pull, and throw people to the ground with a boot over their head. You’ve seen troops shoot civilians in cold blood. You’ve seen them bomb cities and towns. You’ve seen them burn cars and humans using tanks, jet bombers, and helicopters. . . I sometimes get e-mails asking me to propose solutions. Fine. Today’s lesson: don’t rape, don’t torture, don’t kill, and get out while you can—while it still looks like you have a choice . . . Chaos? Civil War? We’ll take our chances—just take your puppets, your tanks, your lies, your empty promises, your rapists, your sadistic torturers and go.” Providing reparations to Iraqi civilians for lives and property lost by the “shock and awe” invasion and occupation is a necessity. America should immediately release all prisoners of war and close detention centers. A respected non-governmental organization should be appointed to process claims and pay compensation to those who have been tortured, as defined by the Geneva Convention. Such compensation would run about $1 billion, or four days’ cost of the war. The immanent voice in this process regarding torture and the indiscriminate killing of civilians should be that of Iraq itself, perhaps operating under the umbrella of the Red Crescent Society and The World Health Organization. The very act of assessing damages—perhaps somewhat along the lines of the South African Truth and Reconciliation—would, in and of itself, be a part of the healing process among the various factions of Iraqi society. America should not encourage the growth and heavy armament of a reconstituted Iraqi army, which in the past has frequently acted against civilian governments and Iraqi citizens. McGovern and Polk suggest that “If at all possible, we should encourage Iraq to transfer what soldiers it has already recruited for its army into a National Reconstruction Corps modeled on the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.” These men in the National Police Force and the Reconstruction Corps should be assisted by professionally trained U.N. and even U.S. experts in digging up and destroying the land mines and unexploded cluster bombs and cleaning up the depleted uranium in artillery shells and their targets. Much of this work should be turned over to the Iraqis, but it does require professional training. Rebuilding should be and can be done by Iraqis, alleviating the socially crippling rate of unemployment. The U.S. should make a generous contribution to this effort in the form of grants and loans through the Iraqi government. Parallel to reconstruction should be the demolition of the ugly monuments of warfare by dismantling and disposing miles of concrete blast walls and wire barriers erected around American installations. (The U.S. government might also consider removing the walls and barriers around the White House and throughout Washington D.C.) Withdrawal of U.S. forces must include immediate cessation of work on U.S. military bases. Fourteen so-called “enduring bases” are under construction and five are already built--massive bases amounting to virtual cities in which no Iraqis are allowed and the menial work is done by foreign sweat-shop labor. Prominent is the presence of the Air Force, which is counterproductive in Iraq, but anxious to launch further wars around the Middle East. For America in Iraq the bases are expensive and already redundant; for Iraqis they both symbolize and personify a hated occupation. The U.S. Embassy or “Green Zone” is as permanent a base as they come and by far the biggest embassy in the world. A workforce of one thousand, mostly Asian workers,, live on the site. The Baghdad residents are properly cynical watching what they call in mock-honor of Saddam Hussein’s famously self-glorifying building projects, “George W’s palace,” replete with its own electricity, well-water, and waste-treatment facilities, plus the de rigueur pool, gym, commissary, and American Club while the Iraqis who live in the “Red Zone” watch their lives crumble into pieces. The occasional excesses of the armed forces, which may be understandable in the heat of combat, pale in comparison to the arrogant, ignorant and egregious actions of the isolated occupiers of the Green Zone, for whom the main experience before Iraq was working for the election campaign of this or that Republican politician. “I’m not here for the Iraqis” one staffer said, “I’m here for George Bush.” The most searing rage at the failure of the occupation to acknowledge and solve the principal problems of the Iraqi people has to be directed at these political hacks and war profiteers in the “Emerald City”: Halliburton and Bechtol, Exxon Mobil, Chevron/Texaco, Personal Security Details, CIA, FBI, SAIC, USAID, RTI, Republican ideologues administering the “Reconstruction Racket.” Civil war is now rife and a plan to attend to the grievances of the Iraqi people is nowhere, while Green Zone veterans now work for Republicans or corporations: they’re doing fine in the U.S.A. (See Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq’s Green Zone, by Rajiv Chandrsekaran, New York: Alfred Knopf, , 336 pp.). Chandrsekaran’s book provides the first draft of a legal brief to try thousands of U.S. officials according to the Hague Convention for this participation in the Destruction of Iraq. Even George Packer is furious at these bureaucrats in “Betrayed: The Iraqis Who Trusted America the Most,” The New Yorker, 26, 2007, pp. 52-73.) Needless to say, McGovern and Polk recommend that this “Emerald City” should be turned over to the Iraqi government no later than December 31, 2007. By this time, the U.S. should have bought or rented, or built a “normal” embassy, staffed by fewer than 500 American officials, as opposed to the 2000 or so Americans who today populate the Green Zone (of which only 3 are fluent in Arabic). Insofar as practical, the new building should not be designed as though it were a beleaguered fortress in enemy territory. Also, it should be staffed by foreign service officers fluent in Arabic language and culture, and not by Special Forces soldiers, CIA agents, and private contract mercenaries, who now are predominant in most American embassies and consulates in the Middle East, Asia, Africa, and Latin America, reflecting what Andrew Bacevich calls the militarization of American diplomacy. The mercenaries provided by an industry of more than thirty “security” firms and comprising at least 30,000 “guns-for-hire” constituting a force three times larger than the British troop contingent and operating, literally, as the “loose cannons” of the Iraq war. These “soldiers of fortune” are ex-Special Forces people from the United States, Gurkhas from India, ex-soldiers from Pinochet’s Chile, former Nicaraguan “contras,” members of Salvadoran “death squads,” South African secret policemen during the apartheid regime, and even three neo-Nazis from Germany. Once Iraqis started fighting back and four Blackwater employees were strung up in Fallijah, the macho men stopped swaggering and lowered their profile. These mercenaries should be withdrawn rapidly and completely, as Iraqis regard them as the worst symbol of the occupation. Since the U.S. continued pays for them, either directly or indirectly, all we need to do is stop payment. Another matter to be cleared up is the whereabouts of billions of dollars in petroleum revenue that the American- run Coalitional Provisional Authority was supposed to have given the Iraqi people. Indeed, discount concessions and cost-plus deals awarded to Halliburton and its subsidiary, Kellog, Brown, Root (KBR), Exxon/Mobil, Chevron/Texaco and others have deprived Iraq of approximately $200 billion in revenues. To most Iraqis, and indeed to many foreigners, the move to turn over Iraq’s oil reserve to American and British companies confirms that the real purpose of the mission was to secure, for American use and profit, Iraq’s lightweight and inexpensively produced oil. (For more on the economic plan to destroy Iraq’s infrastructure to enrich American corporations see Graham, “What About the Iraqis?”). The U.S. should not object to the Iraqi government voiding all contracts for petroleum exploration, development, and marketing made during the American occupation. The Democratic Congress should investigate for criminal prosecution America’s record during the occupation which has been reprehensible, with massive waste, incompetence, and outright dishonesty, and then direct fines for Iraqi reconstruction. Some seventeen years ago Iraq possessed an impressive health-care infrastructure: 1,055 health centers, 135 General Hospitals, and 52 specialized hospitals. Most of these facilities were badly damaged by a decade of sanctions and bombing and by the recent warfare and looting. The disappointing results of American corporate efforts regarding hospitals (and schools) is well-known to Iraqi workers and businessmen. One American firm, Parsons Corporation, has been investigated for having a generous “cost-plus” contract to rebuild 142 clinics at a cost of $200 million; although the company put in for and collected all the money, only twenty clinics were built. A new children’s hospital in Basra was to be a showcase for American generosity. It was a joint venture of Bechtol and Project Hope, one of Laura Bush’s favorite charities, overseen by USAID. The embassy eventually ordered work to stop, and auditors found that USAID had “cooked the books” and that the State Department had withheld details of delays and increased costs after spending $200 million. Obviously, argue McGovern and Polk, the U.S. should turn to the World Health Organization, UNICEF, and similarly proven non-governmental organizations for the rebirth of an Iraqi public health system by rebuilding hospitals and clinics and using Iraqi workers and encouraging registered teachers, nurses, and doctors to return. It is sobering to think, they conclude, that the maximum cost of rebuilding Iraq’s public health system would amount to less than what the U.S. spends on the occupation every twenty days. Pentagon officials involved in writing counter-terrorism strategy publicly acknowledge that “the American military’s efforts to aid tsunami victims in Indonesia and to assist victims of Pakistan’s earthquake did more to change Muslim public opinion and to counter terrorist ideology than any attack mission.” (Reported by Ken Balton, President of a Terror Free Tomorrow group.) Rebuilding should also include the resettling of refugees and displaced persons, most of whom are the most skilled Iraqis. The fastest growing refugee crisis in the world remains hidden, receiving little attention other than a few reports from organizations like Human Rights Watch, Refugees International, and U.N.H.C.R. Senator Edward Kennedy, at the urging of George McGovern, wants to form a special task force to deal with the problem of Iraqi refugees, who may be as many as four million. McGovern and Polk suggest that the U.S. should provide fellowships for the training of doctors, lawyers, judges, journalists and a variety of non-governmental social workers. Also, security for resettlement and/or immigration from nations like Syria and Jordan, which are straining under the influx of 3 million refugees, might begin a shift in our relations in the Middle East from occupation to conciliation. (Sweden has admitted 50,000 refugees, the U.S.A. 400.) The overall cost, according to McGovern and Polk, would be $1 billion (or three days cost of the war). The McGovern Polk plan includes provisions for taking care of returning American vets. They note that there are tens of thousands of casualties to be taken care of. Many were likely to inflict wounds on themselves, contemplate suicide, or suffer frequent nightmares. The veterans of Iraq need and deserve a comprehensive rehabilitation—physically, mentally, educationally, and economically, including the highly successful offerings of the World War II G.I. Bill of Rights. Lee Hoinacki has written, “As an American deeply implicated in the Iraq debacle, I am inclined to feel guilt.” McGovern and Polk observe that a gesture of atonement to the Iraqi people for the large numbers of Iraqis killed, incapacitated and tortured is difficult for most Americans. Repentance does not seem “macho” or will strike many Americans as a slur on patriotism. Alien to Americans, especially those in the “power elite,” is the idea of making amends for our actions; we do not like ever to admit that we have been wrong. In the process of ridding Iraq of the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein, we did much damage and disrupted, irreparably damaged, or ended many innocent people’s lives. A simple gesture of conciliation would go far to shift our relationship from occupation to friendship (Out of Iraq, p. 121). As the Bush administration gambles that it can win a two-front war against both Sunni and Shia resistance before Iraq implodes in a Middle Eastern conflagration, George McGovern has once more come under attack for reviving the “romance of the anti-war left,” which is a potential disaster for the Democrats. Martin Peretz, editor of The New Republic, calls McGovern “a morally imperious isolationist with fellow-traveling habits” who “augured the recessional—if not quite the collapse—of such Democratic politics.” The well-known draft-dodger, Bill Clinton, lectures McGovern (who received the Distinguished Flying Cross, which is next to the Congressional Medal of Honor, for 56 missions over Germany, where 100,000 airmen lost their lives) that you must appear strong even if you’re wrong, you can’t be weak and right. (See the “Anti-Anti-War Campaign,” by Ruth Conniff, The Progressive, October 2006). Phillip Berrigan wrote that “we know virtually little of the non-violence of Jesus Christ and the Gospel.” For the Democratic “muscular centrists” in the Joe Lieberman/ Hillary Clinton mold, their innocence (they don’t know) is their guilt (they don’t want to know). David Graham |