Operation Homecoming

By Erik Leaver, YES! Magazine. Posted September 13, 2005.

"There is an old military doctrine called the First Rule of Holes: If you find yourself stuck in one, stop digging." -- The late Rear Admiral Eugene Carroll, U.S. Navy

The invasion, occupation, and continuing war in Iraq has cost the lives of more than 1,700 U.S. soldiers. Thousands more have been physically and emotionally scarred. Iraqis have suffered in even larger numbers. The BBC reports that nearly 25,000 Iraqi civilians have lost their lives and their country has been shattered by violence and continues to languish. Cities such as Fallujah, population 300,000, have been virtually destroyed.

Ending the U.S. occupation of Iraq is the only way to move closer to peace and reconstruction. U.S. and coalition troops are both the cause of and the magnet for the violence in Iraq, not its solution. A goal that would help both the troops currently in Iraq and the Iraqi people would be to bring the troops home by January 2006.

Setting a date will transform the dynamics in Iraq. Iraqis will start to realize that they are in control, not the U.S., and this will give them hope that they will be an independent nation with the responsibility to create their nation on their own terms.

Ending the occupation

The U.S. operates out of approximately 50 locations, including 14 "enduring bases" in Iraq with unabashed names like "Camp Slayer," "Forward Operating Base Steel Dragon" and "Camp Headhunter." Iraqis have on their soil 150,000 U.S. soldiers, an additional 30,000 coalition troops, and 20,000 U.S. military contractors who conduct 12,000 or more patrols each week.

Meanwhile, the Iraqi resistance has grown larger and stronger. In November 2003 the Pentagon estimated that there were about 5,000 Iraqi resistance fighters. Today, estimates range from 16,000 to 40,000 fighters with about 200,000 supporters. The continuing presence of U.S. troops has strengthened, not weakened, the resistance. 

With the withdrawal of the occupation forces and the resulting end of the Iraqi structures supporting those forces, the major target for resistance attacks will disappear.

Iraq's best chance

January's elections were an important first step toward democracy, but Iraqis still have little oversight over U.S. operations, which affect Iraqi security, natural resources, reconstruction and the economy. The elections appear to have deepened Iraq's sectarian divisions between the Shia, Sunnis and Kurds. These divisions stalled the formation of the government and are slowing the writing of a new constitution. Politicians who are seen as collaborating with the U.S. increasingly are targeted by insurgents.

Having Iraqis in charge of their own security is a goal that the Bush administration and the peace movement can agree upon. But that can only happen in a truly sovereign nation. The police and military forces the U.S. is trying to create in Iraq have failed to provide security for the Iraqi people because they are fighting in a war that puts anyone associated with the U.S. occupation at great risk.

At the same time, soldiers and police officers lack training, and with unemployment in Iraq ranging between 30 and 70 percent, many Iraqi soldiers are loyal only to the paycheck they receive. More importantly, Iraqi security forces cannot succeed as long as the U.S. is leading a war on the ground in Iraq, as it is unclear who the security forces are fighting for--the U.S. or a nascent Iraqi government with no real power or popular support.

What will happen when U.S. troops are withdrawn? No one can say with any certainty. But it is certain that if Washington continues to "stay the course," U.S. troops will continue to die, and they will continue to kill. And Iraq's reconstruction will remain stalled.

It is likely that the withdrawal of U.S. troops would lead to the collapse of at least some parts of the current government, but some of its institutions--including the police, the military, and other security agencies--could survive under new leadership untainted by association with the U.S. occupation.

Without an outside enemy occupying the country, it is also possible that the kind of secular nationalism long dominant in Iraq would again prevail as the most influential political force in the emerging Iraqi polity, replacing the fundamentalist tendencies currently on the rise among Iraqis facing the desperation of occupation, repression, and growing impoverishment.

It is unlikely that the violence will completely disappear with the end of the occupation, or that the Iraqi military can rebuild itself instantly after U.S. troops are withdrawn. As a result, there should be plans for providing temporary peacekeeping or security assistance if Iraq requests it.

Erik Leaver is policy outreach director for the Foreign Policy In Focus project at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C.

Reprinted from Yes! A Journal of Positive Futures, PO Box 10818, Bainbridge Island, WA 98110. Subscriptions: 800/937-4451.

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