STRATEGY FOR ENDING THE IRAQ WAR - By Tom Hayden

[Kevin Spidel]

STRATEGY FOR ENDING THE IRAQ WAR
By Tom Hayden, Progressive Democrats of America Advisor
http://blog.pdamerica.org/index.php?p=279

STRATEGY FOR ENDING THE IRAQ WAR
April 2005 Report

Summary of strategy: people power to undermine the pillars of war (Global Appeal, Jan. 2005)

The pillars (# of asterisks indicate the most effective currently, *** the highest)

1. *** Pressure on capacity of US armed forces (No soldiers, no war.)
. After an anti-recruiting protest at the Bravo magnet school in Los Angeles recently, students chased the recruiters away. In Madison, a recruitment center was taken over by students demanding it be turned into a financial aid office. In New York, a recruiter complains that he is “barraged with epithets from passers-by angry about the war.” These are among numerous signs that recruiting for Iraq has become the biggest crisis the Pentagon faces. Recent headlines: “Recruiting Goals Are In Harm’s Way” (LAT, Mar. 17, 05), “For Recruiters, a Hard Toll from a Hard Sell” (NYT, Mar. 27, 05). Details:

- at least 37 Army recruiters themselves have gone AWOL since Oct. 2002
- Army misses its active-duty recruiting goal in February, first time in five years.
- The Reserve has missed its monthly quotas since October.
- The Marines missed their monthly targets in January and February, the first time in ten years.

For activist information, see www.youthandthemilitary.org.


Pentagon figures for AWOL soldiers are now 6,000. (“Unvolunteering: Troops Improvise to Find a Way Out, NYT, Mar. 18, 05). In a recent setback, a Canadian board has rejected a refugee status appeal by an American deserter, Jeremy Hinzman, but the case will be appealed and become a focus of political debate. But the March peace demonstrations outside Fort Bragg and Camp Pendleton were great shows of support for dissenting GIs. (Contact Iraq Veterans Against the War (ivaw.net) or Military Families Speak Out (mfso.org., or CodePink).

With 40 percent of its soldiers in Iraq drawn from reserves and the Guard, the recent Vermont referendums are having an effect. The measures call for both troop withdrawals and public assessments of the impact of Guard deployments on state readiness for emergencies.

2. *** Pressure on “Coalition of the Willing” (No Front Group, No War) You know it’s rough when the latest poster-country for independence, Ukraine, begins withdrawing its several hundred troops from Iraq (NYT. Mar. 13, 05). Then, in the wake of the unexplained US killing of an Italian journalist, the Berlosconi government began announcing strong hints of a withdrawal by next year. (NYT, Mar. 7, 05). The European charm offensives of Bush and Rice did not change either European opinion or European policy. The NATO contribution to training Iraqi security forces outside of Iraq remains “tiny”. (NYT, Feb. 11, 05). By various accounts, the “coalition” has fallen from 34 nations to 20, including several US client states such as Honduras. The next likely watershed is the British election in May, which Blair’s Labor Party is expected to win but by a sharply reduced margin. Blair’s regime is trying to silence public debate about torture of Iraqi prisoners in Basra in 2003, for which three British troops are facing court-martial in Germany. Photos of British sexual abuse are inflaming European opinion. (NYT, Jan. 21, 05)

3. ** Pressure on Congressional Budget (No Funding, No War) With little debate, the House of Representatives passed the $81 billion supplemental in March with only 43 dissenting votes. The measure is now before the Senate and is expected to pass by a substantial margin. In part this lopsided result was due to the positive climate generated in Washington by the Iraqi national elections. But it also reflects a deep problem in the Democratic Party and disarray among anti-war activists about anything “electoral”. Even so, tens of thousands (perhaps even more) of messages were sent to Congress by Progressive Democrats, Progressive Majority, and United for Peace and Justice, a good beginning to a longer-term project. California PDA will present an anti-war resolution to the party’s convention April 15, and consideration is being given to peace candidacies in 2006 and 2008, as happened during the Vietnam war in 1966-68.

Without movement pressure, Democrats will continue to hide. With movement pressure, Democrats will resume public criticism and hearings that force media coverage and complicate the Administration’s war policies. For example, without having to vote for withdrawal, the Congressional Democrats could perform a useful function by hearings on prisoner torture (the Gonzales connection), crony contracting (the Cheney connection), and costs (on their own, Missouri students have constructed a campus “tent state” and a website showing the costs of Iraq to Missouri taxpayers ($2.3-plus billion, equaling the cost of 180,000 four-year college scholarships).

To join the campaign to pressure Congress, contact Progressive Democrats of America.

4. * Pressure on Public Opinion (No Majority, No War). Surveys show at least 25 percent of voters, or forty million Americans, favoring withdrawal, with about 55 percent, or 90 million people, feeling that the war was “unwarranted” but wondering if the mistake would be compounded by immediate withdrawal. The Bush Administration will do everything in its power to keep the middle bloc of Americans from drifting into the withdrawal camp as the 2006 elections close in. That is why Bush is gambling on the Iraqi election process – from January to this December – to keep most Americans feeling that “hope is on the way.”

These dynamics have resulted in opportunistic retreats from anti-war efforts by Move.On and mainstream Democrats.

How can anti-war activists conditioned to street protests and confrontations make progress towards expanding public support for withdrawal from 25 to 50 percent? Films, debates, books and articles are part of the persuasion process. So are candidacies and campaigns like those in Vermont, because they require outreach to the uncommitted. Much depends on whether activist groups set organizational goals like doubling their membership.

If persuasion goes too slowly, the fate of public opinion will depend on the casualty rates and costs reported from the battlefield, as filtered through the Pentagon and the media. The Bush strategy is “Iraqization”, which means putting an “Iraqi face” on the Baghdad governing process and the fighting. Bush is forced to do this because of evident opposition by the American public to continuing deaths of American soldiers, and the latent opposition to restoring the draft.

The insurgents continue maintain the offensive in Baghdad and northern Iraq. They have “turned wide areas of the country, including Baghdad, into what is effectively enemy territory, with an ability to strike almost at will, and to shake off the losses inflicted by American troops”, the NT Times reported on Jan. 20. One month later, the Times announced that insurgent attacks on Baghdad’s oil, gas, heating oil and electrical facilities had reached a “degree of coordination and sophistication not seen before” (Feb. 21, 05). And yet more recently, the Times’ veteran military correspondent , John F. Burns, reported that Americans believe the “tide may be turning”, based on diminishing attacks on the Green Zone and along Haifa Street in central Baghdad. (Mar. 21, 05). Burns was cautious in this optimistic assessment, for good reason. The overwhelming firepower of the US should be able to defeat any guerrilla insurgency in a fixed urban location. Not to do so would be like failing to defend Times Square.

While the insurgency continues with no end in sight, the same cannot be said with certainty of the new Iraqi government. Gone is moment of celebration after the elections. The new regime is being formed behind the scenes, not by the power of the people. Two months have passed and, by all accounts, Iraqi opinion is demoralized once again.

After the hoopla over the elections, the media is not reporting, and the anti-war movement is not demanding to know, the most important story perhaps since the fabricated tales of weapons of mass destruction. The US still may be manipulating the process is had designed for the Iraqi elections in order to prevent the emergence of a new regime offering to open peace talks with the insurgents in exchange a fixed timetable for US withdrawal.. In the absence of critical journalism, the evidence is hard to assemble, but the Times reported on the eve of the Jan. 30 elections that the projected winners would “almost certainly ask the United States to set a specific timetable for withdrawing its troops.” (Jan. 19, 05) Indeed the dominant Shiite coalition promised voters they would press for such a timetable. Then two things happened that should concern all students of electoral fraud. First, the Shiite coalition fell short of the vote total it was projected to win, preventing them from organizing a new government. Second, the doors closed and the jockeying began, presumably with American direct or indirect participation, including all sorts of funding promises to future coalition officials. The chance for peace initiatives emerging as a result of the elections was lost. According to the Times and many others, the US wants any withdrawals to be based on “the military situation”, which means the defeat of the insurgents at some unknown time in the future.

All this leads to one final observation to be pondered by those who are conflicted about whether the US should withdraw. They complain that the US needs an exit strategy, oblivious to the possibility that there is no exit strategy because the US has no intention whatever to withdraw from its planned outpost in the Middle East.

That leaves only two choices for concerned Americans: accept an American empire extended to the Middle East at whatever cost in lives, taxes and national honor, or join a movement to undermine the pillars that make such an Empire possible. #

[HamdenRice]

1. Great post -- we need those anti Vietnam War veterans ...

to help formulate a strategy for getting out of Iraq. This post is great, because I often feel like we don't know concretely what to do to end this horrible, brutal and pointless war. It makes sense that the people who helped end the VN war, like Hayden, can give use the benefit of both their triumphs and mistakes from that era.

[alfredo]

2. Ask your state legislators if an assesment has been done on

the state's ability to cope with local emergencies due to the huge deployments of Guard units.

[paineinthearse]

3. I read another post last week about recruiters

They are feeling the stress of not meeting their quotas. Loss of sleep, ulcers, etc. Some have volunteered for duty to Iraq to avoid the stress.