What Can You Do About It?

Respond to an article or write about a new topic

incitemagazine Web

The Left's Uneasiness Over Immediate Withdrawal from Iraq

© Kara Brodgesell

In the event of military occupation of one country by another, the moral burden of justification rests on the occupying force. If the occupying power cannot provide sufficient justification for its presence, it should withdraw immediately. Moreover, the only sufficient justification for military occupation is that the occupied population is better off under occupation than they would be otherwise. In the case of the Iraq war, most of the U.S. Left opposed the invasion but now timorously supports the occupation based on the assumption that Iraqis benefit from our presence in their country. Here at Wesleyan the argument is typically based on two assumptions: 1) that Iraq will be more violent and chaotic if we leave, and 2) that we must help Iraq rebuild before leaving. But a closer look at both assumptions might lead us to reevaluate our support for the occupation and our hesitancy to advocate immediate withdrawal.

“There will be more violence if we leave”

This argument may seem reassuring to U.S. citizens concerned about their government’s actions in Iraq, but there is little evidence to support it. Even Western media outlets have reported escalating levels of violence and death over the second half of 2006. Estimates of Iraqi civilian deaths alone for September and October 2006 are over 3,000 for each month, with a U.N. estimate of 6,376 for November and December. In mid-January, the U.N. released a report tallying 34,452 civilian deaths during 2006 (a figure that has been criticized as too low for not including unregistered deaths).¹ But beyond unverifiable casualty estimates, the level of violence has clearly accelerated since mid-2006. Moreover, sectarian divisions have deepened significantly. Throughout Iraq, the U.S. invasion and occupation have accentuated sectarian divisions rather than uniting Iraqis, as most knowledgeable observers now agree.²    

Not surprisingly, U.S. conduct during the occupation has drawn numerous comparisons to that of Saddam Hussein. In fact, in many ways the U.S.-led forces and the nascent Iraqi government have simply replaced Saddam, installing new officials but maintaining similar policies. In the 2004 assault on Fallujah, U.S. forces used an internationally-banned chemical weapon (white phosphorus) to fight the insurgency there, producing in the words of one Iraqi “a grim reminder of Saddam Hussein’s gassing of the Kurds in 1988.”³ Abu Ghraib, now famous for the torture carried out there by U.S. soldiers, was equally notorious under Saddam’s regime as the site of some of the dictator’s most vicious crimes.⁴ In late 2005 Kenneth Roth of Human Rights Watch stated that torture under the occupation forces had been adopted and used “as a matter of official policy,” citing the Bush administration’s official encouragement of “‘cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment,’ as long as the victim is a non-American held outside the US.”⁵ In fall 2006, U.N. legal expert Manfred Nowak said that “The situation is so bad” in Iraq that “many people say it is worse than it has been in the times of Saddam Hussein.”⁶  

But most importantly, Iraqis are overwhelmingly opposed to the U.S. presence in their country. A secret poll conducted for the British Ministry of Defense in August 2005 found that 82 percent of Iraqis are “strongly opposed” to the occupation, and “less than one per cent of the population believes coalition forces are responsible for any improvement in security.”⁷ A year later, in September 2006, the Maryland-based Program on International Policy Attitudes found that 78 percent of Iraqis believe that the U.S. military occupation “is provoking more conflict than it is preventing.” The same poll found that 71 percent of Iraqis want the full withdrawal of U.S. military forces by mid-2007. Furthermore, increasing numbers of Iraqis state that they support the opposition’s attacks against U.S. forces—61 percent compared with 47 percent in January 2006.⁸ In many cases Iraqis who did not previously support sectarian leaders started doing so when those leaders began attacking U.S. forces. One survey of Shiites found that support for Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr rose from 1 percent to 68 percent when al-Sadr began actively fighting the U.S. military.⁹

In truth, no one knows precisely what will happen when the U.S. withdraws. An immediate withdrawal could bring hardship for many Iraqis in the short-term. But as historian Howard Zinn argued in 2004, “We face a choice between the certainty of mayhem if we stay, and the uncertainty of what will follow if we leave.”¹⁰ What is clear from recent statistics and polls in Iraq is that (1) the U.S. presence is generating more violence than it is preventing, and that (2) the Iraqis whom we are supposed to be helping overwhelmingly oppose the occupation. In light of these two facts, any moral justification for remaining in Iraq quickly dissolves. If we genuinely value peoples’ right to self-determination, then we must obey Iraqis’ wishes and withdraw immediately. A “phased” withdrawal would be senseless, and would only prolong current patterns of violence while leaving the remaining U.S. soldiers more vulnerable. The near future may not be pretty for Iraqis, but as Zinn says, immediate withdrawal “gives the Iraqi people a chance. Continued US occupation gives them no chance.”¹¹

“We need to help rebuild Iraq”

The U.S. has clearly failed to prevent violence and improve living conditions in Iraq. But in addition to inciting further conflict and encouraging terrorism, the U.S. has ignored the basic needs of the Iraqi population. In mid-2005 U.S. journalist Dahr Jamail published a lengthy analysis of Iraqi hospitals under the U.S. occupation, reporting the “abject failure of the U.S. to carry out even minimal humanitarian duties as occupying power.”¹²

The fact is that “reconstruction” has been going on since 2003. But most of the money that the U.S. government has allocated for it has gone to corrupt private corporations with little or no accountability to either Iraqis or to U.S. taxpayers. As a result, executives and employees from Halliburton, Bechtel, and other Western corporations, in addition to corrupt Iraqi officials, have stolen billions of dollars in taxpayer funds and Iraqi resources while accomplishing much less than their contracts stipulate. To put things in perspective, experts have estimated that the entire Iraqi public health system could be rebuilt for only $1.7 billion—a small fraction of the money already doled out to unaccountable corporations and, incidentally, the financial cost of eight days of the U.S.-led occupation.¹³

Contrary to what many opponents of withdrawal say, most of those who are advocating immediate withdrawal fully agree that the U.S. should pay reparations to Iraq. One unsuccessful House bill that proposed immediate withdrawal (Jim McGovern’s H.R. 4232) sought to cut off funds for military operations, but did not seek to prohibit all funding for Iraq; it made exceptions for money spent to safely withdraw U.S. troops, to provide “financial assistance or equipment to Iraqi security forces and international forces,” and to fund “social and economic reconstruction activities in Iraq.”¹⁴ The recently-introduced H.R. 508 makes similar stipulations, as does Dennis Kucinich’s 12-point withdrawal plan.

Although the United States obviously has obligations to rebuild, it has no moral authority in Iraq, and no right to play any leadership role in deciding the future fate of the country and its people. Any funds contributed by the U.S. must be given free of any sort of conditionality or specifications on the part of the U.S. government as to how those funds are used. To prevent corrupt Iraqi officials and businessmen from misusing the funds, international auditing or supervision would likely be necessary for money given directly to the Iraqi government. Perhaps the best way to allocate reparations would be on the grassroots level; that is, the U.S. should relinquish all funding, which will then be distributed under international auspices to Iraqi villages, local councils, and community organizations.¹⁵ At home, the U.S. government should drastically increase its allocations for veterans’ health care, which could cost over $600 billion over the next 40 years. 

A Democracy-Based Approach

As it turns out, then, two of the major arguments that progressives and leftists use to justify the U.S. occupation are irrelevant: the argument that “Iraq will be worse off if we withdraw” is groundless and the second argument, that we should pay reparations to Iraq, is perfectly compatible with the call for immediate military withdrawal. In particular, proposals for “phased withdrawal” as opposed to immediate withdrawal lose credibility. The only logical conclusion is that continued occupation beyond the time required to safely withdraw U.S. forces is morally indefensible.

Whatever their political stripes, most of the politicians and commentators in the U.S. who support the occupation share several assumptions: first, that the U.S. occupation actually seeks to foster democracy; second, that the U.S. knows what is best for Iraqis; and third, that Iraqis will annihilate each other if left unsupervised. These assumptions—of noble intentions on the part of the invading force and of a childlike incapacity for self-governance on the part of the invaded—reflect U.S. exceptionalism as well as a thinly-veiled racism, both of which are widespread among political elites in this country. But perhaps these assumptions also influence the thinking of those of us who call ourselves progressives. To continue supporting the occupation while knowing that an overwhelming majority of the Iraqi people oppose it certainly calls into question our conception of ourselves as progressives committed to liberal democratic values. Many of us are quick to condemn past military occupations that have been carried out against the wishes of populations in countries like Cuba, the Philippines, and Vietnam. But how do we so-called “progressives” react when confronted with a similar situation in the present?

As Wesleyan students it is not up to us to start an anti-war movement; it already exists, both on and off college campuses. Disillusioned military personnel, working-class families, labor and minority rights organizations, students like us, and others who favor peace over our country’s imperialist foreign policy are already organizing anti-war activism all over the country. We as Wesleyan students play a crucial role in this movement, offering support in a variety of ways that usually require minimal effort (see below). Wesleyan’s Students for Ending the War in Iraq (SEWI) has taken many anti-war actions, including counter-recruitment efforts, peace demonstrations, meetings with our local U.S. representative, and a wide range of films, guest speakers, and educational campaigns in collaboration with local peace groups.

Sometime in the decades to come, the history of the Iraq war will be written. It will tell of how the United States first devastated the Iraqi population with thirteen years of sanctions, then how it launched an illegal invasion and lengthy military occupation against the will of the Iraqi people, killing hundreds of thousands in the process. But we as citizens have the power to force a change in our government’s actions, and to save countless human lives in the process. Let’s use this crucial historical juncture to define ourselves as agents not for war and violence, but rather for peace and justice.

Kevin Young is a senior History and Latin American Studies major at Wesleyan University. He has studied in Nicaragua and in Chiapas and Oaxaca, Mexico, and is writing his senior thesis about indigenous popular education in Mexico.He plans to attend graduate school for Latin American history and to teach in the future. He can be contacted at KYoung@Wesleyan.edu.