Tom Engelhardt: Why Withdrawal Is Now on the Agenda
Republican Congressman Walter B. Jones (famed for insisting that the Congressional cafeteria re-label French fries as"freedom fries" on its menu), a man who represents North Carolina's 3rd Congressional District, home to the Marine's Camp LeJeune, voted enthusiastically for the Iraq War, but recently changed his mind. Last week, he became one of four congressional sponsors of a resolution calling for a timetable for withdrawal."Do we want to be there 20 years, 30 years?" he said at a Capitol Hill news conference."That's why this resolution is so important: We need to take a fresh look at where we are and where we're going."
Various explanations for his unexpected change of mind (and heart) have been offered. In the last lines of a June 13 piece, Sunni-Shiite Quarrel Edges Closer to Political Stalemate (scroll down), New York Times reporter Sabrina Tavernise made the following connection:
"[Jones's] remarks came two weeks after military commanders told a Congressional delegation visiting Iraq that it would take about two years before enough Iraqi security forces were sufficiently trained to allow the Pentagon to withdraw large numbers of American troops."
About two years. I was struck by that phrase in part because I had just been rereading a piece I wrote less than seven months after our President announced from the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln that "major combat operations in Iraq have ended." I called it"The Time of Withdrawal" and posted it on October 31, 2003. At the time, I offered the following:
"Two years hence, according to [occupation head] L. Paul Bremer's men in Baghdad, we Americans are still going to be 'reconstructing' the country. In the Pentagon, according to the latest reports, generals are discussing what our troop levels there will be in 2006."
That was then, this is now -- or do I mean, that was now, this is then? After all, as Tavernise and other reporters, quoting our military commanders in Iraq, make clear, we're still that miraculously receding"two years" away from significantly drawing down U.S. forces and having a reconstructed Iraq (not that the reconstruction of Iraq is much mentioned any more). In other words in October 2003, we were talking about 2005-06. In June 2005, we're talking about 2007-08. What's wrong with this picture?
Sadly, if anything, the similarities may be deceptive. After all, at the end of October 2003, it was still possible for most Americans to imagine a pacified -- or as the Bush people would now say,"democratic" -- Iraq by 2005-06. Today, as poll figures indicating fast-sinking support for the war and the President tell us, as edgy monthly casualty figures tell us, as Walter Jones's changed position tells us, as the latest nose-dive in military recruitment figures tells us, as the fact that 35% of Americans, according to a Pew poll, think we are now back in Vietnam tells us, things in Iraq are just getting worse and worse.
John Newton, a reader from Michigan, recently framed this in an interesting way when, after reading a Jonathan Schell piece on our failing attempt to create an Iraqi army, he sent the following into the Tomdispatch e-mail box:
"It occurred to me that we've reached the point where we've got to bribe everyone to fight this war. The Iraqi Army salaries aren't much by our standards, but they are probably twice or three times what an ordinary Iraqi makes. And yet in a place with massive unemployment, they still desert. We have perhaps 20,000 or more" contractors" doing security work who make salaries in the 6 figures to be in Iraq. And now the military is offering signing bonuses of up to $40,000. For a high school kid, that is a down payment on a house and a car. That is not so easy to pass up, but the recruiters still can't get them to sign."
He's right. In a sense, between 2003 and 2005, we've moved decisively to the devolving side of our first free-market war. Before the invasion of Iraq even began, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was eagerly privatizing the Pentagon, stripping its forces, beefing up its technology, and outsourcing many matters which were once distinctly military to the private economy. (In other words, Halliburton, of which our Vice President was previously the CEO, and its subsidiary, KBR, off constructing bases and doing KP.) Hence, even before the invasion of Iraq, when General Eric Shinseki was essentially laughed out of neocon Washington for telling Congress that we would need an army of "several hundred thousand" men to occupy a defeated Iraq, such an army already didn't exist. (The statement was undoubtedly Shinseki's way of saying: Don't go in!)
Next, under the label of"reconstruction," the Bushniacs attempted (catastrophically) to privatize Iraq, more or less turning it over to friendly"free market" corporations like Bechtel and Halliburton (which had the good fortune of getting Global War on Terror goodies coming and going -- it was, after all, responsible for building much of that jewel-in-the-crown in the Bush administration's Bermuda Triangle of Injustice, Guantánamo prison, and only recently got a $30 million contract to add further facilities there). Now, as Newton points out in his letter, the Bush administration is trying to privatize defeat by turning military recruitment in Iraq and at home into a bonus-plus bidding war. Under these circumstances, the draft-era phrase from the Vietnam years,"Hell no, we won't go," is morphing into the Volunteer Army phrase,"Hell, no, I won't join."
Withdrawal on the Agenda
Back in 2003, when I wrote"The Time of Withdrawal," I offered the following simple summary of our situation and why withdrawal should be on the American agenda:
"History, long term and more recent, is not on our side."We are a war-making and an occupying force, not a peacekeeping force.
"We never planned to leave Iraq.
"Time is against us.
"Or to boil all this down to a sentence: We are not and never have been the solution to the problem of Iraq, but a significant part of the problem."
I wouldn't change a word. In October of 2003, however, the"time of withdrawal" was distinctly not upon us. Now -- finally -- it is. We seem to have reached the actual moment when the idea of"withdrawal," at least, is being placed on the American agenda -- by the unlikely Walter Jones, among others. This is, of course, a far worse moment for withdrawal than in 2003, for Iraqis as well as Americans, just as 2007 will be worse than today.
But at least it's here. How can we tell? Several signs (other than just the Congressional resolution) point to its arrival. First of all, there's the return of Vietnam. It's on everyone's mind these days -- and not just because our President is at the moment welcoming the Vietnamese prime minister to the White House and announcing that a visit to our former enemy's land is in the offing. (Keep in mind that when Richard Nixon started feeling the combined pressure of Vietnam/Watergate, he used travel to strange lands -- think: Communist China and the Soviet Union -- as a way to try to distract public attention.)
Representative Jones, for instance, recently said:"When I think about what happened in Vietnam -- we lost 58,000 -- I wonder, Wouldn't it have been nice if, two years into the war, some representatives would have said, 'Mr. President, where [are] we going?'" At about the same time, Marine Lt. Gen. James T. Conway, director of operations for the Pentagon's Joint Staff,"alluded to the precedent of Vietnam, in which plummeting public support for the war was blamed for undercutting the U.S. effort." You could pile up such examples endlessly.
Perhaps more important, the President is now working off what clearly seems to be the Vietnam playbook -- Lyndon Johnson's playbook circa 1967. Like Johnson, facing falling polling figures and calls for withdrawal, he is staging a series of major addresses to"reassure" the American people (and shore up those polls). Just last Saturday on the radio, in his radio address, he declared that there would be no cutting-and-running for him, no withdrawal option at all:"This mission isn't easy," he said,"and it will not be accomplished overnight. We're fighting a ruthless enemy that relishes the killing of innocent men, women, and children. By making their stand in Iraq, the terrorists have made Iraq a vital test for the future security of our country and the free world. We will settle for nothing less than victory."
Words to eat, of course.
As readers never hesitate to remind me, Iraq is not Vietnam -- or as Daniel Ellsberg put it sardonically,"In Iraq, it's a dry heat. And the language that none of our troops or diplomats speak is Arabic rather than Vietnamese." But the Vietnam experience is fused into American consciousness in such a way that, the minute things start to go wrong, our leaders find themselves, almost helplessly, following that Vietnam playbook. So, as we enter the terrain of withdrawal, we should be thinking about Vietnam as well. The withdrawal resolution Jones and his co-sponsors put forward was, on the face of it, Vietnam-ish in the sense that it had relatively little to do with actual withdrawal. (In the Vietnam years, almost every"withdrawal" plan or strategy that came out of Washington had a great deal to do with keeping us in Vietnam, not getting us out.) This particular resolution evidently proposes that, by the fall of 2005, the administration create a"timetable" for a withdrawal to be begun the following fall of 2006 (with no designated end in sight, nor total withdrawal, it seems, even mentioned). This is, on the face of it, a non-withdrawal withdrawal proposal.
But the details may make little difference. The Bush administration, which could essentially have accepted the proposal and had endless"withdrawal" time to spare, attacked it strongly because what they can see -- as well they should -- is the first cracks appearing in Republican Party support. You know something's happening when Nebraska Republican Senator Chuck Hagel says"Things aren't getting better; they're getting worse. The White House is completely disconnected from reality. It's like they're just making it up as they go along. The reality is that we're losing in Iraq"; or Republican Senator from Florida Mel Martinez pronounces himself"discouraged" by the"lack of progress" in Iraq. This is no small thing. This is not a party that is eager to be pulled into a Vietnam-like hell and then swept out of Congress in 2006 or 2008. As University of North Carolina professor (and former U.S. Air Force historian) Richard Kohn puts it:"You've got Republican grandees in the Senate who probably aren't willing to put up with this much longer."
Paralyzing Fantasies
So here we are on Vietnam-like withdrawal turf, and one sure sign of that is the sudden foregrounding of a series of predictions about the horrors that would occur if the United States were to withdraw from Iraq. These are well summed up in a recent piece by Richard Whittle of the Dallas Morning News (Experts: Iraq withdrawal now would be bad idea). According to the"foreign policy experts" Whittle interviewed, these nightmare scenarios could"at worst" include:
"A civil war in Iraq resulting in far greater bloodshed than the current conflict, though presumably without further U.S. losses."The transformation of western Iraq, which is dominated by Sunni Muslims, into a haven for international terrorists from al-Qaida and other groups.
"A collapse of U.S. credibility among nations of the Middle East, whose leaders would probably distance themselves from Washington.
"A collapse of the Bush administration's push for democracy in the region.
"Instability in the Persian Gulf that could lead to steep increases in oil prices, driving the cost of gasoline beyond current record levels."
Now, here's the fascinating thing when you look over a list like this: All these predicted nightmares-to-come constitute a collective warning not to act in a certain way; but each of the specific potential nightmares also represents a phenomenon intensifying at this very moment exactly because we are in Iraq. Each is in operation now largely because we have almost 140,000 troops on the ground in that country; a vast intelligence and diplomatic network, a shadow government, embedded in a kind of Forbidden City in Baghdad's Green Zone; humungous military bases all over the land, some of which have the look of permanency; an Air Force that is periodically loosed to bomb heavily populated urban areas of Iraq -- all of this, in a very foreign land which, under any circumstances, would be hostile to such an alien presence.
Between the moment in late 2003 when I wrote"The Time of Withdrawal" and today, Iraq has, in fact, crept ever closer to some kind of civil war -- it may already have begun; Western Iraq has been transformed into a"haven" for terrorists and jihadis; American" credibility" has collapsed not just in the Middle East but globally; the Bush push for"democracy" does look embattled; and oil prices, which in 2003 were surely hovering around $30 a barrel, are now up at double that price, while Iraq is almost incapable of exporting significant amounts of oil and"instability" in the Gulf has risen significantly.
A similar situation played itself out in Vietnam back when nightmarish visions of what might happen if we withdrew ("the bloodbath") became so much a part of public debate that the bloodbath actually taking place in Vietnam was sometimes overshadowed by it. Prediction is a risky business. Terrible things might indeed happen if we withdrew totally from Iraq, or they might not; or they might -- but not turn out to be the ones we've been dreaming about; or perhaps if we committed to departure in a serious way, the situation would actually ease. We don't know. That's the nature of the future. All we know at the moment, based on the last two years, is what is likely to happen if we stay -- which is more and worse of the very nightmares we fear if we leave.
The most essential problem in such thinking is the belief that, if we just hang in there long enough, the United States will be capable of solving the Iraqi crisis. That is inconceivable, since the U.S. presence is now planted firmly at the heart of the crisis to be solved.
One guarantee: the Bush administration won't hesitate to deploy such fantasies of future disaster to paralyze present thinking and planning. Expect it. And it will be all too easy to take our eyes off this disastrous moment and enter their world of grim future dreams. After all, they already live in a kind of ruling fantasy world. They step to the podium regularly, their hands dipped in blood, call it wine or nectar, and insist that the rest of the world drink. They will be eager to trade in their best future nightmares so that the present nightmare can continue. (They argue, by the way, for the use of torture, under whatever name, in quite a similar fashion, proposing future nightmares -- let's say we held a terrorist who had knowledge of an impending nuclear explosion in a major American city and you only had two hours to get that information from him, what would you do? -- in order to justify the ongoing horrors at Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib, Bagram Air Base and other places.)
Returning to what I wrote in October 2003, on only one point was I wrong, I believe. I wrote then:
"What is bad now for us – and for the Iraqis – will only be worse later. The resistance will be greater, more organized, and more determined. Our allies, both within and without Iraq, ever more distant; American troops more isolated, angry, and embattled; money in shorter supply; military morale lower; and the antiwar movement here stronger."
Generally on the money, except when it came to the antiwar movement. I was, of course, projecting from the huge antiwar marches of the prewar moment. But so far, at least, Iraq has not proved to be Vietnam when it comes to an antiwar movement; or rather, it's as if we had arrived at the end of the Vietnam-era antiwar movement first. In 1972, when the non-military part of that movement more or less collapsed, the antiwar soldiers remained. Vietnam Veterans Against the War was the official name of the main organization they formed, but the military in Vietnam itself was in near-revolt -- rising desertions and AWOLs, fraggings,"search and avoid" missions (where patrols just left perimeters and then sat out their assigned duties), escalating drug use, demonstrations by veterans in the U.S., and so on.
In the Iraq War, though in a far more modest way so far, the antiwar movement has been emerging in large part from the world of the military itself -- from worried parents of soldiers and would-be soldiers, angry spouses of soldiers in danger or killed in Iraq, and (slowly and quietly) from within the military itself. This is what has moved Rep. Walter B. Jones. Along with growing cracks in the Republican Party, the alienation of the military (including many officers who clearly believe that Iraq=madness) is a real threat -- perhaps the only real withdrawal threat at present. Predicting the future is a chancy thing to attempt. We humans are notoriously lousy at it. This I was incapable of fully imagining.
Otherwise, read my October 2003 piece. Withdrawal is now on the agenda, not just ours but the Iraqi one as well. Just the other day in a letter, "82 Shiite, Kurdish, Sunni Arab, Christian and communist legislators," just under a third of the newly elected Iraqi parliament, called for the withdrawal of American occupation forces. Given this administration, withdrawal is likely to be on the agenda for a long time to come. But that shouldn't stop us. Let the thoughts pour out. Let the plans pour in. (Note that Juan Cole at his always invaluable Informed Comment website has recently taken a first stab at offering a reasonable withdrawal plan, one involving the UN. Don't hold your breath, of course, if John Bolton arrives at UN headquarters after being rejected by the Senate.
I hope to return to the issue of such plans next week. In the meantime, let me just end on another letter that came into the Tomdispatch email box recently. It's a reminder -- the sort that Rep. Jones evidently got in his district -- that there is a complex constituency out there, people connected to soldiers, sailors, and airmen and women deployed in or around Iraq, who are also considering what we really should be doing and how our world actually works in fascinating and sometimes inspiring ways.
"Dear Tom,"My grandson's father came home from Iraq two weeks ago. He is one of the lucky ones as the Air Force appears (I have no documentation either way) to not be in harms way over there, but time will tell.
"I am happy for my grandson and his father. My only concern now is the 1,700 men and women who have died needlessly in this unholy war -- my version as a devout Catholic, but I believe all Christian people regardless of their religious beliefs, not the religious right, but the true Christians who believe in and pray for peace are against this war. Let us not forget that Muslims also pray to the same God we do, and believe we are doing them harm by occupying their country, so naturally, they feel God is on their side. There is too much labeling going on in the media right now and it is difficult to watch. We all have a birth-right to follow our conscience, without judgment or bias from the media.
"What concerns me is most Americans are just like me, trying to squeak out a living, pay their mortgage, pay their bills and take care of their children, and grandchildren. Example, I hit the ground running each day, fire up the laptop, answer the endless email requests I receive at work, spend long hours at work due to the volume and corporate greed which keeps our VPs from hiring enough staff, so all of us carry the jobs of two or more people. I grew up here and now that I'm 53, I think my state is going to hell in a hand-basket (pardon the expression).
"I have an interesting parallel going on in my life. My son has a Vietnamese girlfriend who is as cute as a button (she came here when she was a year old) and her dad has returned to Vietnam to live, and my son and his girlfriend are considering visiting there in the next year.
"When our boys were in Vietnam, it never for a moment crossed my mind that in my wildest dreams any of my descendents, let alone my only son, would even think of going to visit Vietnam. It was unthinkable because of the war, which we thought would never end.
"Next slide: can you picture your grandchildren visiting Iraq on vacation? No, I can't imagine it either. But it brings me back to the fact that war is momentary, even if it lasts for 20 years, and then life changes, making things we never thought possible, possible.
"I hope and pray we can get out of Iraq sooner, not later, or another 20 years of conflict and another 58,000 of our men and women will have lost their lives for nothing. There was absolutely no reason to start this war and it's brought pain and suffering to many parents in America and many citizens of Iraq.
"Don't get me wrong, I pray every day for the men and women who are over there; I know they are following orders and went into the military with open and true hearts. As a country, we have let them down. I said when George W. became president in January 2001, I'd be lucky if my job was still there by the end of his presidency, never dreaming he would be in office for 8 years.
"Well, off to get ready for another Monday. Please keep our soldiers and their parents in your prayers. I came so close to losing my daughter in the hospital in ‘99, and still can't imagine what it's like to lose a child; I'm grateful I didn't and pray for those who have.
"We can't give up on ending this war, but we have to find a better way to mobilize America. We can't give up. I pray every, every day for an end to this. Take care and Godspeed..."
It's up to all of us to consider the timing and the time of withdrawal.
This article first appeared on www.tomdispatch.com, a weblog of the Nation Institute, which offers a steady flow of alternate sources, news and opinion from Tom Engelhardt, a long time editor in publishing, the author of The End of Victory Culture, and a fellow of the Nation Institute.