|
|
 | | From: | Steven L. Robinson | | Subject: | [progchat_action] Howard Zinn on Immediate Withdrawal from Iraq | | Date: | Sat, 22 Jan 2005 22:13:23 -0500 |
|
|
 | Posted on Sat, Jan. 22, 2005
IRAQ Support our troops: Bring them home
BY HOWARD ZINN
http://pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-review/opinion/columnists/guests/s_295621.html
We must withdraw our military from Iraq, the sooner the better. The reason
is simple: Our presence there is a disaster for the American people and an
even bigger disaster for the Iraqi people.
It is a strange logic to declare, as so many in Washington do, that it was
wrong for us to invade Iraq but right for us to remain. A recent New York
Times editorial sums up the situation accurately: ``Some 21 months after the
American invasion, United States military forces remain essentially alone in
battling what seems to be a growing insurgency, with no clear prospect of
decisive success any time in the foreseeable future.''
And then, in an extraordinary non sequitur: ``Given the lack of other
countries willing to put up their hands as volunteers, the only answer seems
to be more American troops, and not just through the spring, as currently
planned. . . . Forces need to be expanded through stepped-up recruitment.''
Here is the flawed logic: We are alone in the world in this invasion. The
insurgency is growing. There is no visible prospect of success. Therefore,
let's send more troops? The definition of fanaticism is that when you
discover that you are going in the wrong direction, you redouble your speed.
In all of this, there is an unexamined premise: that military victory would
constitute ``success.''
Conceivably, the United States, possessed of enormous weaponry, might
finally crush the resistance in Iraq. The cost would be great. Already, tens
of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, have lost their lives (and we
must not differentiate between ''their'' casualties and ''ours'' if we
believe that all human beings have an equal right to life.) Would that be a
``success''?
In 1967, the same arguments that we are hearing now were being made against
withdrawal in Vietnam. The United States did not pull out its troops for six
more years. During that time, the war killed at least one million more
Vietnamese and perhaps 30,000 U.S. military personnel.
We must stay in Iraq, it is said again and again, so that we can bring
stability and democracy to that country. Isn't it clear that after almost
two years of war and occupation we have brought only chaos, violence and
death to that country, and not any recognizable democracy?
Can democracy be nurtured by destroying cities, by bombing, by driving
people from their homes?
There is no certainty as to what would happen in our absence. But there is
absolute certainty about the result of our presence -- escalating deaths on
both sides.
The loss of life among Iraqi civilians is especially startling. The British
medical journal Lancet reports that
100,000 civilians have died as a result of the war, many of them children.
The casualty toll on the American side includes more than 1,350 deaths and
thousands of maimed soldiers, some losing limbs, others blinded. And tens of
thousands more are facing psychological damage in the aftermath.
Have we learned nothing from the history of imperial occupations, all
pretending to help the people being occupied?
The United States, the latest of the great empires, is perhaps the most
self-deluded, having forgotten that history, including our own: our 50-year
occupation of the Philippines, or our long occupation of Haiti (1915-1934)
or of the Dominican Republic (1916-1924), our military intervention in
Southeast Asia and our repeated interventions in Nicaragua, El Salvador and
Guatemala.
Our military presence in Iraq is making us less safe, not more so. It is
inflaming people in the Middle East, and thereby magnifying the danger of
terrorism. Far from fighting ''there rather than here,'' as President Bush
has claimed, the occupation increases the chance that enraged infiltrators
will strike us here at home.
In leaving, we can improve the odds of peace and stability by encouraging an
international team of negotiators, largely Arab, to mediate among the
Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds and work out a federalist compromise to give some
autonomy to each group. We must not underestimate the capacity of the
Iraqis, once free of both Saddam Hussein and the U.S. occupying army, to
forge their own future.
But the first step is to support our troops in the only way that word
support can have real meaning -- by saving their lives, their limbs, their
sanity. By bringing them home.
Howard Zinn is author of the best-selling A People's History of the United
States.
This email was cleaned by emailStripper, available for free from
http://www.papercut.biz/emailStripper.htm
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----
Yahoo! Groups Links
a.. To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/progchat_action/
b.. To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
progchat_action-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
c.. Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service.
|
|
|
