How to Get Out of Iraq

By Tom Hayden, In These Times. Posted August 25, 2005.

When you're in the middle of a conflict, you're trying to find pillars of strength to lean on," an American officer in Iraq said recently. With those words he provided a clue to ending the war: Undermine the pillars of Pentagon policy through people power.

Those pillars -- among them public cooperation, Iraqi cooperation, congressional compliance, centrist caution, military recruitment and U.S. alliances -- are weakening.

The Time Is Now

Public support for the war is down, as are the president's ratings. Antiwar Democrats are coming back. Military recruiting is hitting a wall. The strategy of "Iraqization" is failing. The coalition of the willing is disintegrating. America's reputation is tattered.

Public sympathy towards Cindy Sheehan suggests a crucial shift in America's sensibility toward the losses. Usually wars generate a public reluctance to withdraw without "victory" so that the fallen shall not have "died in vain." In this case, Sheehan has led much of the country through a grieving process that demands the truth so that no others will die for hollow or fabricated reasons.

Recognizing its weaknesses, the administration is on a mission of perception management to gain time and resources. Americans are now being promised that Iraq will have a new constitution, democratic elections and, most importantly, that the first troops may be home by the spring of the 2006 election year.

These gestures are the Bush administration's responses to the quandaries it is confronting on the battlefields of war and domestic public opinion. They are designed to extend the conflict while appearing to begin disengagement. This ploy is nothing new; we should remember that the Vietnam War continued for seven years after President Johnson was pressured to resign and peace talks began.

"They just keep getting stronger," The New York Times recently wrote when describing the Iraqi resistance. The Times went on to confirm that over the past year the insurgents have inflicted some 65 attacks on U.S. and Iraqi troops each day, with increasing sophistication and precision. Baghdad is "effectively enemy territory, with an ability to strike at will, and to shake off the losses inflicted by American troops." American casualties cannot be concealed. During May and June, 71 Americans were killed in 700 attacks; by the year's end it is likely that 2,000 Americans will have been killed, not counting hundreds of American private contractors. According to Pentagon data, 13,000 Americans have been wounded in battle, more than half of them seriously. Tens of thousands will return with serious mental health problems.

U.S. troops cannot hold the territory they occupy -- the classic contradiction faced by an occupying power trying to prop up an unrepresentative regime against a nationalist resistance. The training and deployment of Iraqi counter-insurgency troops -- "Iraqization" -- has failed so far, according to declassified Pentagon reports. And Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld says it may take four, eight, or 12 years -- in other words, several more U.S. presidential cycles.

Iraqi Antiwar Groups Rise

The most significant factor on the ground is the rise of an Iraqi movement calling for U.S. withdrawal and the end of the occupation. Rather than welcoming such a development, the administration and a media blinded by its own paradigms have ignored the possibility of a peace process among Iraqis.

Buried in the eleventh paragraph of a July 2005 story about two British contractors dying in Iraq, the Times mentions that supporters of the Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, famous for two uprisings against American troops, collected one million signatures against the occupation in three weeks. In addition, on June 12 at least 82 members of the Iraqi parliament -- one-third of the body -- issued a statement calling for the end of occupation and complaining they were not properly consulted in the United Nations Security Council's recent extension of the occupation.

The rumblings within America's client regime reflect a widespread consensus on the ground. Surveys taken at the beginning of 2005 show that 82 percent of Sunnis and 69 percent of Shiites favored a near-term U.S. withdrawal. According to the State Department's own internal surveys, at least half of Iraqis interviewed say they feel unsafe because of the presence of American troops.

Indeed, a former minister in the Iraqi government, Dr. Aiham Al Sammarae, is engaged in peace talks with representatives of at least four insurgent groups. He spoke in Washington in July about his mission, but has received no public acknowledgement by government officials or mainstream reporters. In all likelihood, the Bush administration is struggling to suppress even moderate voices against the occupation. After all, how would the United States respond to a broad-based antiwar movement in Iraq? Call a majority of Iraqis dupes of terrorism?

Tom Hayden was a leading opponent of the Vietnam War. He was indicted, tried and finally acquitted on charges of conspiracy to riot during the 1968 Democratic Convention. Hayden later served 18 years in the California legislature. He is the author of 12 books and currently teaches at Pitzer College in Los Angeles.

Liked this story? Get top stories in your inbox each week from AlterNet! Sign up now »