We must withdraw our military and corporate presence from Iraq and the sooner the better.  Our presence there is a disaster for the United States people and for the Iraqi people.

How can people say it was wrong for us to invade Iraq but right for us to remain?

We are essentially alone in battling the country, and a growing insurgency, with no clear prospect of success in the future.  So what is the answer?  Send more American troops?  Where is the logic?  Or, is it just fanaticism?

To bring democracy to Iraq?  To bring stability?

And, does a military victory constitute success for America?  Look at the casualties on both sides!  3,300 Americans, and probably 100,000 to 700,000 Iraqis!

What is success, pray tell?

We have brought chaos, instability, violence and death to Iraq!  And we see no prospect for creating Democracy there either!

There is no certainty as to what will happen should we pull out, leave, depart, withdraw, retreat or “cut and run” if you wish to call it that.  However, there is absolute certainty if we continue to stay and have a presence:  escalating deaths on both sides, mostly Iraqi civilians (including children); but even dead American, many maimed, wounded and blinded, and many others with psychological damage.

Has not America learned anything from its many occupations of other countries, under the guise of pretending to help the people being occupied?  What about 50 years of occupation of the Philippines,  20 years of Haiti, eight years of the Dominican Republic and even our military intervention in southeast Asia, the Caribbean and Central America during the 20^th century!

Our military presence in Iraq is hurting not helping the Iraqi people.  It is angering people all around the world, and did so, even before we invaded Iraq in 2003.  Prior to our pre-emptive strike and invasion of Iraq, there were demonstrations in Germany, Spain, England, Italy, Australia, Japan, Brazil, many other countries and most importantly in our own country.  Now we are magnifying the dangers of terrorism, causing the growth of new terrorists, not less.  Forster anger and hurt throughout the Islamic world, and even spilling over into country that have been our traditional allies.

We are not safer, as President Bush has claimed by our military actions and presence.  However, we have now increased the chances of enraged people throughout the world striking us here again, and more deftly and effectively.  Innocent Americans, will suffer the consequences of our disastrous foreign policy and our blind and illogical strategy in the Middle East.  We have become our own worst enemy.

By withdrawing our troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, we can improve the chances for peace and stability, both abroad, and at home.  Do not underestimate the ability and capacity of Iraqis to recreate their own more peaceful future.  Previously, they were able to live with more order and stability while under a dictator, and now they are freer from the tyrannies imposed on them earlier.

The first step is to support our troops in the only way the word “support” really means:  by saving their lives, their limbs, their sanity-----and this can be done by bringing them home now!

The NatureCoast Coalition for Peace and Justice is calling for the immediate withdrawal of all U.S. and international troops from Iraq.  Not gradual, or when the situation is “stabilized,” or some undefined point in the future.  All of these strategies, or solutions, are recipes for continued long-term occupation and bloodshed.  Why?  Because the people who made the decision to go to war, are the same ones who will make the decision to leave, and they have too much at stake to winning the damn thing!

In retrospect, just with regard to Vietnam alone, prolonging the war causes enormous suffering.  As Washington saw us losing in Vietnam, we did not retreat, but expanded the war to Laos and Cambodia.  30,000 more American troops and over one million Cambodians died because of that strategic blunder by our political and military leaders.

Iraq and Vietnam have many similarities:  1) difficulty of American military to impose its will on a people who do not welcome its intervention; 2) soldiers themselves have begun to question rationale for the war as they see contradictions in the claim that the US is “bringing democracy” to a people it is brutalizing; 3) profound costs of war at home, re. social spending cuts, families and communities torn apart; 4) veterans abandoned by a government that seeks to silence dissent insisting that we must “support our t troops,” which really means we must uncritically support the war that is killing them needlessly.  And 5) the US is trying to cover its failures by pursing an “Iraqization” of the conflict...

However, there is a big difference between Vietnam and Iraq.  Iraq has the world’s 2^nd largest oil reserves and sits in a region with two-thirds of global oil reserves.  Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen wrote, “…there can be no premature, chaotic and shameful withdrawal.  In the end, Vietnam didn’t matter, Iraq does.”  Senator John McCain said in 2005 that the “stakes are higher” in Iraq “than they were in Vietnam.”

Consequences of defeat in Iraq are far more significant than a “retreat.”  It would turn out to be a serious reversal.  The ability for the US to intervene in other countries in the future will be severely hampered.  This is why the Democratic Party has been tied in knots and lacks leadership, for fear of “losing” the war in Iraq.

If the US crushes Iraq militarily, in time, that will really mean that we have achieved an appearance of victory,” while having to occupy the country for years to come.

As in Vietnam, the highest price of the war will ultimately be paid by the Iraqi people, as did the Vietnamese people did.

Washington, to this day, has never assumed meaningful responsibility for their war crimes in Vietnam, as they are now doing for their war crimes in Iraq (i.e. Dow Chemical and its production and use of Agent Orange in Vietnam).

The United States Justice Department has fought government complicity in war crimes regarding Vietnam and now Iraq.  The Justice Department has challenged restrictions on the right of the US military to use torture or to conduct “extraordinary renditions” of anyone it deems an “enemy” or “unlawful combatant.” 

This Administration views itself above all international law, and can conduct wars with only the most cursory oversight (legal, congressional or international judicial).  In February, 2002, 13 months before we invaded Iraq, the Bush Administration formally concluded that the Geneva Conventions do not apply to US actions in the “war on terror.”  The horrors of Camp X-Ray and Camp Delta in Guantanamo, of Abu Ghraib and other US prison camps in Iraq and Afghanistan, and of the outsourcing of torture to states known for their abuse of prisoners and detainees are all the logical outcome of a “doctrine of impunity,” where they avoid any responsibility or penalty for their actions.

The US and other allied countries now use the excuse; they are “merely protecting themselves against terrorism.”

Every single argument the Bush administration made to justify the invasion of Iraq has turned out to be false:  1) Iraq had no wapons of mass destruction; 2) posed o imminent threat to the US; 3) had no connection to al-Qaeda or to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001; 4) Iraq was attacked not because it had weapons of mass destruction, but because it DID NOT have them!; 5) US soldiers were not greeted as liberators; 6) the occupation has not paid for itself; 7) the war did not require fewer troops as stated; 8) the war has not been quickly concluded; 9) the occupation has not made the world safer, but is worse off; and 10) it has not reduced the threat of weapons of mass destruction in the surrounding Middle East or in the world. 

All  of these above facts were all publicly predicted by the antiwar movement, which the media systematically ignored.  On every substantive point, the antiwar movement has turned out to have been rifght in its analysis, and the Bush Administration has turned out to be wrong.

The collapse of the Bush administration’s case for was has been so complete that the establishment media, his own party, many neocons  have had to retrospectively question their own positions on the war.

In actuality, the establishment press and media have become the mouthpiece for this administration, and every administration that is in power, no matter what political party they represent.

The Bush Administration manipulated intelligence, circumbented the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency, depended on a pliable media that would not seriously challenge their case for war, depended on the Democratic Party to crumble under the threat of appearing unpatriotic or weak on national security and they concealed their real reasons for invading Iraq.

The attacls pf Se[te,ber 11. 2001, provided the pretext the Bush Administration needed to portray an offensive war, to  reshape the Middle East, to protect the people of the US.  They say 9/11 as an opportunity to carry out plans that long predated the attacks.  They immediately set out to target Iraq, depsitye the fact that the country had no link at all to the highjackings.

However, the invasion of Iraq was not about terrorism, al-Qaeda, or September 11^th.  It was about OIL!  This petroleum product is an essential componet of the world economy, vital for production and transport in every industry, including the military and essential to the US’s ability to retain control over the Middle   East and dominate the world economy.

Plus, the Iraq invasion was also about a president needing to maintain his popularity as he slid  down in the polls the last two years.  He maintained an agenda of a “War President,’  thus, parlaying himself, fancifully, into a second presidency.  He defeated Democratic candidate John Kerry, whose military experience was also made into a negative versus this “wartime president.”

Had Saddam Hussein been a brutal dictator in some less strategically located country, for example in East Africa, or had he followed White House orders better, he would certainly still be in place.  “Regime change” became a necessity to ensure US hegemony---the new domino theory.

Iraq has approximately 112  billion barrels of proven oil reserves (only surpassed by Saudi Arabia), oil of very high quality, which is easy and cheap to extract and export as well---unlike the oil of the Caspian region.  Iraq has the added advantage of being able to transport much of its output throught eh Mediterranean to Turkey---the greatest flexibility of any other Middle East producer.  Iraq also sits ina region with large natural gas reserves.

Washington has been committed to use oil alone as a weapon against other  countries, particularly  economic and political rivals in Asia and Europe., by controlling the supply and flow of oil.  China, India and Japan import significantly from the middle east, while the US only draws down 13% need now.  Global oil reserves have declined thus making oil more expensive and increasing competition to access it.

The broader United States strategy aimed at assuring permanent American global dominance involved the removal of Saddam Hussein; only to be replaced by someone more beholden to the US.

Two additional important facts:  the US military is being converted into aglobal oil-protection service by its deployments and locations; and, secondly, the use of force to ensure US access to  Persional Gulf oil is not a Bush II policy or a Republican policy, but a bipartisan, American policy, involving both major political parties and its leaders.

The United States has made the world a more dangerous place, at home and abroad, and has undermined democratic developments in the Middle East by adhering to this strategy.

Antiwar dissidents, rank and file US military and international forces need to transform the irrational economic and political system that has led us to the two wars in Vietnam and Iraq, and that is today very directly threatening the survival of the human race.

Brian Moore

Spring Hill, Florida

April 22, 2007

Ideas and quotes taken from Anthony Arnove’s “Iraq, the Logic of Withdrawal,” and from the introduction in this book written by Howard Zinn