Americans
Want A Rapid Exit
From Iraq But Elected Leaders
Aren’t Even Considering It
By Kevin Zeese
30 December, 2006
Countercurrents.org
If the election results did not
make the message clear, polls since the election have done so. Support
for sending additional troops to Iraq is at 11 % according a December
15-17 poll by CNN. The same poll found that 54% of Americans want the
troops home by the end of 2007 and 67% oppose the war. Yet, in the Capitol
there is talk of adding new troops and almost no talk of getting out
of Iraq. Representative government is failing to represent the voters.
Why is the leadership of
both parties in Washington, DC failing to discuss getting out of Iraq
– rapidly? They say a U.S. exit will lead to an escalation of
violence, a blood bath or civil war. But the truth is we can design
a rapid exit from Iraq that reduces the risk of violence. How?
First, it is important to
look at the real violence. While sectarian violence gets all the attention
in the U.S. media. The November 2006 DoD report, “Measuring Stability
and Security in Iraq” found that more than 80% of violence is
directed at the U.S. military or at the Iraqi military. “Coalition
forces attracted the majority (68%) of attacks.” said the report.
Attacks on Iraqi Security Forces are the next largest category, with
attacks on civilians being the smallest group. Thus, the real war is
between Iraqi’s fighting the U.S. and its Iraqi allies. Of course,
civilian’s amount for the most casualties as they are unprotected
when attacks occur.
Dahr
Jamail, a top reporter on Iraq, reports on December 28th in an article
entitled “More Troops but Less Control in Iraq” that “Through
the occupation, each time the U.S. has increased troop levels, there
has been a corresponding increase in attacks on the forces, and consequently
an increase in civilian casualties.” Thus, rather than learning
from past experience the Bush administration, with a compliant Congress,
are likely to repeat past mistakes.
On December 6 James Baker,
the co-chair of the Iraq Study Group, even admitted to Anderson Cooper
on CNN that removal of U.S. troops may reduce the violence.
“COOPER: And is it
possible that getting the U.S. troops out will actually lessen that
violence, that it will at least take away the motivation of nationalist
insurgents?
“BAKER: Many people
have argued that to us. Many people in Iraq made that case.
“COOPER: Do you buy
it?
“BAKER: Yes, I think
there is some validity to it, absolutely. Then we are no longer seen
to be the occupiers.”
Despite the fact that a U.S.
withdrawal is likely to reduce the violence, Baker concluded: “We're
still going to have a very robust -- forced presence in Iraq and in
the region for quite a number of years after this thing sorts itself
out whichever way it sorts itself out. We have to do that because we
cannot -- we have vital national interests in that region.”
William
Polk, a former Harvard and University of Chicago professor who has
served in various foreign policy posts in the U.S. government, is in
the process of writing about twelve insurgencies throughout history.
His review finds that one common denominator of insurgencies is “when
the occupiers leave the violence ends as the insurgency loses support.”
While merely leaving Iraq
is likely to reduce the violence because Main Street Iraqis will realize
they are getting their country back and will no longer have to resist
U.S. occupation, there are additional steps the U.S. can take to make
a reduction in violence even more likely. William Polk and George McGovern,
co-authors of “Out
of Iraq,” put forward a detailed strategy for leaving in a
way that is likely to reduce the violence.
There are two broad areas
they recommend: (1) strengthen the government by funding civil works
project to rebuild the country, creating jobs for Iraqis and encouraging
hundreds of thousands of Iraqis to return home; (2) underwrite a stabilization
force that will engage in bringing basic security and policing to Iraq
– a force that will not include U.S. soldiers. The cost of these
two steps is a fraction of the cost of the Iraq occupation and will
save the U.S. more than $100 billion immediately.
Regarding funding the rebuilding
of Iraq, it is important to remember that Iraq was able to rebuild its
country after the first Gulf War. They have the capability to rebuild.
Rebuilding efforts by Halliburton, Bechtel and other U.S. contractors
has failed and because they employed a foreign workforce resulted in
very high unemployment in Iraq, reportedly over 50%. As an Iraqi businessman
told The
Washington Post “The longer this [unemployment] goes on, we
are asking for trouble because we are breeding more and more insurgents.
Unemployment is exactly what the terrorists want.”
Indeed, the U.S. military
recognizes that high unemployment may be a major source of the insurgency.
As Military.com
reported:
“’Most of the
folks that are out there are not ideologues,’ Air Force Gen. Lance
Smith, who heads U.S. Joint Forces Command, told Inside the Pentagon
last week in a telephone interview. ‘They’re people that
don’t have jobs that [do] have a choice: You can go make 10 or
20 dollars a month picking up trash. . . . You can make -- you pick
the number -- 50 or 100 dollars to be a policeman, or 50 or 100 dollars
to be a soldier [in the new Iraqi army]. Or you can get $200 to go pick
up an RPG [rocket-propelled grenade] and go shoot at the next camouflage-desert
vehicle that goes by.’”
The November 20 DoD report
on stability in Iraq noted that unemployment “has been an issue
that has had a significant effect on the security environment.”
Combined with underemployment – estimated by one Iraqi government
agency at 34% – unemployment “may make financial incentives
for participating in insurgent or sectarian violence more appealing
to military-age males,” says the Pentagon assessment.
Polk and McGovern include
in their list of costs: rebuilding funding for the reconstruction of
Iraq by Iraqis; removing landmines and depleted uranium; dismantling
blast walls and wire barriers; restoring archaeological sites; training
lawyers, judges, journalists, and social workers in Iraq; bringing back
professional Iraqis who emigrated; rebuilding Iraq's public health system;
compensating the families of civilians killed and tortured and training
an Iraqi police force.
In addition, to this there
would be a need to fund a stabilization force; a force that would not
include U.S. soldiers because
we cannot bring security to Iraq. They describe this as a group
“hired” by the Iraqis, not to fight the insurgency, but
to provide order on the roads, at schools, banks, hospitals and other
key locations. This force would preferably include Arabs and Muslims
from non-contiguous countries acting under UN auspices or a regional
authority like the Arab League. Polk and McGovern estimate such a force
would cost $6 billion for two years.
McGovern and Polk estimate
the cost of rebuilding Iraq to be $13.2 billion. David
Swanson of AfterDowningStreet.org makes slightly higher estimate
totaling $22.05 billion based primarily on the number of Iraqis killed
or injured as he used the Lancet study which came out after their book
was written. Swanson points out “That's the cost of twelve and
a half weeks of occupying Iraq.” The Congress has already approved
$70 billion for Iraq 2007 expenditures and will be considering another
$100 billion in an appropriation supplemental this February. Thus, the
U.S. will immediately save $148 billion – that’s billions
the U.S. will not have to borrow from China and other countries as the
U.S. is already spending more than we have.
But, it is also $148 billion
that could be spent on other basic needs at home. For example, we could
restore, and add to, the nearly 2 billion annually cut from veterans
benefits last year. Further, the U.S. could invest in the most important
step the United States could take to protect its security, slow global
warming, protect the environment and build a 21st Century economy –
invest in evolving from a fossil fuel based economy to a clean, sustainable
energy economy. Then, the U.S. would no longer have the need to engage
in oil wars. We’d even have money left over for a middle class
tax cut!
Ending the occupation of
Iraq is consistent with the views of the majority of Americans, will
save tens of billions of dollars, allow investment in urgent needs at
home and put our economy on a more secure footing. Yet, the leadership
in Congress is not even debating it. They seem to put their desire for
military bases in Iraq, control of Iraq and Middle East oil and protection
of Israel ahead of the views of the voters. Is our democracy working?
Kevin Zeese
is executive director of DemocracyRising.US and a co-founder of VotersForPeace.US.
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