Time To Bring
Our Troops Home
By Todd Huffman
27 September, 2005
Countercurrents.org
When my daughter asked why our daily newspaper
only updates the number of Americans killed in Iraq, at first I fumbled
for an answer. Somehow managing an air of assuredness, I told her that
no one really knows how many Iraqis have died, which, I suppose, is
a half-truth. I could not admit the whole truth, that the countless
Iraqi dead are only countless because America does not bother to count
them.
Over the past two
and a half years, how many Americans have given thought, like my daughter,
to how many Iraqis have been killed as a result of this profoundly misbegotten
war? Truth is thousands upon tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians have
died in the rubble of our misdeeds, along with nearly two-thousand Americans.
That most Americans seem unaware or simply unbothered, blithely evoking
the memory of our own catastrophic loss four years ago as justification,
has led the global community to conclude that to Americans, non-American
life must be cheap.
Such a conclusion
is understandable. Killing others for the sake of ones own security
does assume their lives have lesser value. As much as Americans might
recoil at this suggestion, our collective oblivion to the toll this
war has taken on everyday Iraqis only confirms its veracity.
No matter our intentions,
when we kill the innocent, we become the enemy, and the ranks of those
who wish to do us harm swell in turn. And with each civilian humiliated
or killed, the intensity of their hatred and fervor grows. With every
passing week the war in Iraq allows an elusive and inexhaustible counterinsurgency
to claim further justification for its own inexcusable violence and
crimes.
Throughout the Islamic
and even the Western world, well-educated and thoughtful young Muslims
now liken America to Nazi Germany. To many Muslims young and old, democracy
and liberty have become synonymous with military occupation, the physical
and sexual abuse of prisoners, and the death of civilians. Since our
invasion, extensive and repeated international polling in Muslim countries
reveals that there has been a drastic increase in the number of people
across the world convinced America is their enemy. How does this make
us more secure?
In military terms,
this war has been a recruiting sergeant for the very forces of terror
our leaders sought to destroy. Rather than controlling terrorism, this
war has licensed it, and has endangered rather than enhanced our national
security. Iraq itself has become the new Afghanistan, even as we have
failed to completely secure the old Afghanistan.
The unprovoked and
unwarranted invasion and conquest of Iraq diverted our attention and
resources from our proper course: clearing out every terrorist haven
which Iraq was not and capturing and bringing to justice
every terrorist responsible for September 11. Common sense, that one
should not start new wars when others are unfinished, was ignored. Rather
than chase bin Laden and al-Qaeda to the ends of the earth, we have
instead chased our nations fortune into the mouth of an omnivorous
and never-ending war.
Nothing of vital
interest to the United States necessitated this misadventure. All justifications
for going to war in Iraq save that Saddam was a brutal tyrant have proven
vacuous. This war was not thrust upon us; we chose it.
Our continuing presence
in Iraq is each day not only generating more terrorists, but also diverting
resources from more urgent needs at home and elsewhere abroad. America
is draining its Treasury of a billion dollars a week fighting every
prospective terrorist to death in Iraq a prescription for endless
war that might otherwise be spent here at home improving our
national security by fortifying our cities and our ports, and protecting
our people against poverty, ill-health, ill-education, and the threats
of disaster natural and manmade.
It is time for this
gigantic distortion in our national priorities to be called to an end.
This war that our leaders have concocted has sapped our military strength,
our credibility, our economy, our disaster preparedness, our morale,
and our moral standing in the world. It has increased the threats America
faces, and reduced the military, financial, and diplomatic tools with
which we can respond. It is time to bring our troops home.
Its getting
too late to look ugly. Even our military leaders now admit that the
insurgency cannot be defeated by force. Our military is strained to
the breaking point, and is increasingly unable to meet its recruiting
goals. It is time to bring our troops home.
Americans themselves
have gone from thinking the war was not a mistake to thinking that it
was. The most recent polls show a record 67 percent disapproving of
the Presidents handling of Iraq, while 63 percent said some or
all U.S. troops should withdraw. And in June of this year one million
Iraqis mostly majority Shiites signed a petition calling
for an end to American occupation of Iraq. It is time to bring our troops
home.
However, a massive
American army occupying a nation half a world away cannot be withdrawn
immediately. America must establish a clear timetable for
withdrawal from Iraq, and immediately halt our construction of permanent
military bases and begin to reduce our military presence.
And America should
not be seen as withdrawing, wounded, into its emotional carapace. A
withdrawal from Iraq must be coupled with new regional and international
diplomatic initiatives that will, in addition to the withdrawal and
to the reinvestment of resources here at home, make us stronger and
more secure.
There will be in
our time and in future times other causes and other threats, and America
will need not only the power to confront them, but the moral authority
as well. A nation without credibility cannot lead, for no one will follow.
Withdrawing from Iraq is the first step towards restoring our moral
leadership in the world. It is time to bring our troops home.
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