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What’s NFP’s Stance on the Mess in Iraq Now? (The same as it’s always been.)

NFP

U.S. OUT. U.N. IN.


As we’ve said for five years now, going back to the summer of 2002 when the Bush/Cheney White House first began its drumbeat to invade, this war was absolutely unnecessary.

We charged from the beginning that the intelligence justifying a preemptive attack on Iraq was being manufactured and fixed. We cited the conclusions of U.N. weapons inspectors such as Scott Ritter and Hans Blix that there were no WMDs in Iraq. We warned that this aggressive venture was more about a ‘resource grab’ for Iraq’s oil than it was about removing a military threat. And even when 70 percent of the American public rallied to the administration’s side, we unwaveringly opposed the “shock and awe” bombing campaign, the ensuing ground invasion and the ongoing occupation that has now entered its fourth year.

The White House’s arguments about “staying the course” are nonsense. There is no “course.” Iraq is broken and, riven now by civil war, impossible to reassemble. We should have retired — with apologies to all — the moment it was proved there were no weapons of mass destruction. Instead, the justifications for the occupation changed: It was about “bringing democracy to the Mideast.” It was about taking the fight against al-Qaida on their own turf. It was about removing a war criminal guilty of crimes against humanity. Today, the “democratization” project is in shambles. Al-Qaida is stronger and more pervasive than ever. And all Saddam’s botched execution accomplished was to stiffen the resolve of the Sunni insurgency.

The Democratic majority in Congress now says, “We must get out of Iraq by the fall of 2008. We must establish benchmarks forcing the Iraqi government to democratically share power, redistribute the oil wealth and thereby contain the sectarian violence. But Iraq’s Shiite government is not interested in democratizing the government. It’s bent on avenging the wrongs done to Shiite majority by the Sunni minority. And there is no way the U.S. itself can promote democracy in Iraq. We have no credentials, let alone legal standing. Our own government cares nothing for democracy at home — witness the stolen elections in Florida and Ohio that gave it two terms in office. Witness the abuses of the Patriot Act and the “warrantless wiretap” program. Witness Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib and the administration’s defense of the use of torture.

But we’d already lost any credibility we might have had with the Iraqis even before George Bush became president. We forfeited that during all those years we coddled Saddam Hussein as a favored ally — before we turned against him that is, and defeated his country in the first Gulf War. And then, we guaranteed the Iraqi people’s hostility by enforcing a brutal (and yet incompetent) sanctions regime that resulted in the deaths of 500,000 children from malnutrition and disease. We added insult to injury by looking the other way as revenues from the “Oil for Food” program were looted by all hands, and by seeking, after the toppling of Saddam, to install an international felon, Ahmed Chalabi, as the Iraq’s head of state, until the Iraqis rebelled. Iraqi polling data tells us that the Iraqis want us out — but they want possession of the five massive military bases and the “Green Zone” embassy that we’ve built to control the Middle East and its oil resources. The sea of weapons in which Iraq now swims precludes our controlling the insurgency without seriously negotiating with its leaders and the governments of the surrounding states. Militarily, however, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was right when he said the war is “lost.” It’s past time we got out.

The specter that advocates of the war raise is that of endless retaliatory bloodshed. There will be some of that, given the heat of the battle. There was some in Vietnam and some in the former Yugoslavia. But the bloodshed is already occurring. According to the British medical journal, Lancet, more than 600,000 Iraqis have died since the war began. Reuters reports that nearly 4 million Iraqis have been made refugees since the American invasion. And of course, closer to home, nearly 3,500 American service people have been killed and another 25,000 wounded, many of whom are debilitated for life.

What can we do to mitigate the likelihood of bloodshed?

1. We should — humbly and penitentially — petition the United Nations to furnish security forces to patrol the violent areas and offer the U.N. personnel the tools to prevent Sunni- Shiite massacres — and we should foot the bill for the cost. You break it, you pay for it;

2. We should ask the Arab League to work with the United Nations in patrolling the Sunni sections of Iraq. The Arab League has furnished international peacekeeping forces in the past;

3. We should ask the United Nations to guarantee the borders of Kurdish Iraqi areas under conditions negotiated with neighboring states that have large Kurdish minorities;

4. We should enter into direct negotiations with Iran, ask Iran to assist the United Nations in mitigating the Shiite insurgency and acknowledge the sins of our past in overthrowing their democratically elected leader in 1953 to impose the bloody rule of the Shah. We should explore in depth the common interests that we have with Iran in stabilizing the Middle East and Iran’s border with Afghanistan;

5. We should — if requested — assist the United Nations in developing a federalist solution for Iraq that would separate its Kurdish, Shiite and Sunni areas, assist in the movement of vulnerable people who wish to leave mixed neighborhoods, and — should it be deemed necessary — support a plebiscite, in which the people of Iraq themselves determine whether to adopt a federal structure or create separate states.

6. We should renounce any interest in controlling Iraqi oil and its proceeds, order American companies out of Iraq, and request international supervision of the county’s oil industry, with a guarantee that the proceeds of the oil would be distributed equitably among the country’s three populations on a per capita basis.

7. We should withdraw from all efforts to reconstruct the country using outfits like Halliburton, and turn the task of reconstruction over to an international group chartered by the United Nations and overseen by a consultative committee composed of Iraqis and representatives of neighboring countries.

8. We should withdraw all funding for the war immediately and withdraw our troops as quickly as they can be replaced by international peacekeeping forces.

9. And finally… On May 11, according to the Washington Post, “Democrats mustered 171 votes for… tougher legislation that would all but end U.S. military involvement in Iraq within nine months. The 255 to 171 vote against that measure meant that nowhere close to a majority backed it, but the fact that 169 Democrats and two Republicans voted for it surprised opponents and proponents alike.” That kind of measure, to completely defund the war, should be reintroduced and passed.

U.S. Out. U.N. In.