Tom Hayden

Click here to return to the browser-optimized

version of this page.

This article can be found on the web at

*http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060529/hayden*

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hawks for Withdrawal

by TOM HAYDEN

[posted online on May 17, 2006]

Democrats are slowly but surely uniting around a plan for military

withdrawal designed by the Center for American Progress

, a think tank

linked to Clinton-era Democrats and headed by former White House Chief

of Staff John Podesta.

Not all the party leaders agree. Senator Hillary Clinton continues to

posture as a military hawk. Senator Joe Biden wants to dilute and divide

Iraq into three sectarian enclaves. Neither Senator Charles Schumer nor

Representative Rahm Emanuel, who are charged with winning November's

elections, have a coherent message on Iraq, preferring themes like

"corruption" and "incompetence" to a straightforward alternative.

Despite the timidity and paralysis, however, Democrats on the campaign

trail increasingly know they must address the war. Polls show that Iraq

is dragging down ratings for the President and the Republican Party.

Democrats prefer to simply criticize the Administration's handling of

Iraq without discussing an exit plan of their own. This Democratic

approach worked brilliantly on Social Security, where Bush could find no

Democratic divisions to exploit. John Kerry's presidential campaign

tried the same approach on Iraq but discovered that Kerry was losing

both centrist and progressive voters. Today, the most common concern

voters have about the Democratic Party is whether it stands for anything.

Late last September, Lawrence Korb and Brian Katulis first floated their

plan for "strategic redeployment

."

The two authors have credible--that is, conservative--credentials; Korb

was assistant defense secretary under Ronald Reagan, and Katulis is

associated with the "soft power" approach of promoting security through

civic-society initiatives abroad.

Their proposal is framed in hawkish rhetoric. By occupying Iraq, they

argue, the United States is increasing the global terrorist threat.

"Strategic redeployment" redefines military withdrawal not as a retreat

but as shifting US forces to new battlefields in Afghanistan, Africa and

Asia, while basing expeditionary forces in the Persian Gulf and Kuwait

in case postwithdrawal Iraq goes the way of South Vietnam.

The purpose of an Iraq peace, in their view, is to better prepare for

other wars on the frontiers of empire and, further, to "prevent an

outbreak of isolationism in the United States."

Leaving the framing rhetoric aside for the moment, the core propositions

of the CAP paper

point to a nearly complete US withdrawal in the next eighteen months.

They are to:

§ Immediately reduce our troop presence at a rate of 9,000 per month to

a total of 60,000 by the end of 2006, and to "virtually zero" by the end

of 2007.

§ Bring home all National Guard units this year.

§ Double the number of US troops in Afghanistan, place an Army division

in Kuwait, an expeditionary force in the Persian Gulf and an additional

1,000 special forces in Africa and Asia.

§ Shift the central paradigm of Iraq policy "from nation-building to

conflict resolution."

§ Appoint a presidential peace envoy to organize a Geneva conference

under United Nations auspices to "broker a deal" on security, militias

and the division of power and oil resources.

§ Obtain international funds for Iraqi reconstruction with a greater

emphasis placed on Iraqi jobs. Use the assistance to leverage

power-sharing agreements on provincial levels.

§ Make key policy shifts, declaring that the United States seeks no

permanent bases in Iraq and "intensifying its efforts to resolve the

Israeli-Palestinian conflict."

Little is said in the document about Iran, except that until the United

States withdraws from Iraq, "it will not have the moral, political, and

military power to deal effectively with Iran's attempts to develop

nuclear weapons." Under cover of a multilateral Gulf Security

Initiative, Iran would be drawn into discussions with its neighbors

about its nuclear and security policies.

The paper reinforces the positions already taken by several leading

Democrats, including Representative John Murtha, the seventy-member Out

of Iraq Caucus and

Senators Kerry and Russ Feingold. Senator Dianne Feinstein was the

latest to endorse its content. The document is being circulated by

Democratic National Committee chair Howard Dean as well.

Seeking the hypothetical center ground requires Korb and Katulis to

distance themselves from the peace movement, the only citizen force

actually working toward the goal of withdrawal. To do so, the authors

construct a phantom extreme of "immediate withdrawal," which they claim

will permanently destabilize Iraq and the Middle East (as if current US

policies have not already done so). As is common with Clinton-style

politics, a solid centrist reputation is built by lampooning the

progressive position.

All disrespect aside, there is a significant acceptance of the peace

movement's message buried in this centrist proposal. It is not a

proposal to keep US troops fighting until victory. There is a definite

withdrawal timeline proposed and defended--eighteen months, starting

immediately. Last year, peace groups collected tens of thousands of

petitions for an exit strategy including a US declaration that no

permanent bases are intended, a proposed paradigm shift to conflict

resolution, selection of a peace envoy and power-sharing talks with

Iraqi nationalist supporters of the insurgency. Kolb and Katulis

examined the proposal carefully, and these concepts seem to have been

incorporated into the document.

The proposal has weaknesses. First and foremost, it assumes that the new

Iraqi government and armed forces will be sustainable if the United

States begins to withdraw. There is no proposal for an interim

peacekeeping force from neutral countries, as many Iraqi insurgent

groups propose. There is no pledge to assure Iraqi sovereignty over

Iraqi oil. There is an assumption that military withdrawal will be

accompanied by a transition from "a highly centralized command to a

market-based economy." In short, the proposal envisions a kind of

devastated but safe post-Saddam Iraq integrated into the World Trade

Organization, one requiring no more combat deaths.

The current Iraqi Parliament is by no means a solid pillar of the US

occupation. Evidence is mounting that supporters of the Iraqi resistance

have established a stronghold for their views even within the

US-dominated "puppet" structure. Just this week, the Sunni vice

president of Iraq, Tarik al-Hashimy, approved talks between the

insurgents and American officials, but only on the condition that the

guerrillas not stop the fight without a "final deal." President Jalal

Talabani recently said he was negotiating secretly with seven insurgent

groups. A report from

reliable Iraqi sources indicates that a majority of the Parliament's 275

members will support a one-year withdrawal deadline if the question is

put before them. Faced with this quagmire and election-year pressures,

the option of peace, or the appearance of peace, seems to have been

forced on the Bush Administration.

Iraqi army claims that it can "stand up" as the Americans leave are

beyond credibility. If the US armed forces cannot end the insurgency,

why would Iraqi security forces with sectarian loyalties and inferior

weapons be any more effective? Could Shiite forces defeat the Mahdi Army

of Muqtada al-Sadr? Impossible. Would the modest Sunni security forces

suppress the Sunni insurgents? No. Could the Kurdish /peshmerga/ hold

off the whole Iraqi resistance? No. As in Vietnam, "Iraqization" could

become a fig leaf covering the US redeployment, but then only an

agreement with the multiple resistance groups could prevent their demise.

Many in the peace movement are entitled to be affronted over the hawkish

language of the Korb-Katulis strategy paper. But profound strategic

questions are emerging for the peace movement as a whole, as a result of

the movement's relative success. A planned US withdrawal is the majority

sentiment in America, Britain and Iraq. Politicians are adjusting their

positions accordingly, if only for the sake of survival. Political

efforts to isolate and smear the movement, as well as

counterintelligence operations, have failed. In perspective, the peace

movement has contributed to constructing these formidable obstacles to

continued war:

§ An antiwar constituency that affects close Congressional races this

year and presidential calculations for 2008.

§ The inability of military recruiters to achieve their quotas.

§ Domestic discontent over presidential lies, secrecy and wiretapping.

§ A budgetary crisis aggravated by the rising costs of the Iraq

occupation, including oil costs.

§ A moral stain on the US reputation around the world.

§ The steady erosion of the "coalition of the willing."

The peace movement should take some credit for this. And the peace

movement should keep the pressure on the pillars of the war policy, lest

public opinion backslide into divisions or despair. The peace movement

should also be planning now to make it virtually impossible for

presidential candidates to campaign successfully in 2008 without

committing to a speedy withdrawal from Iraq.

But there are understandable limits to what the peace movement can

accomplish in the short run, aside from forcefully expressing the

majority's desire that the United States withdraw. What are those

limits? The peace movement cannot force the US government to "withdraw

now," unless of course the insurgents suddenly overrun the Green Zone.

The peace movement cannot force the United States out of the Middle

East, though it can help pressure our government to reverse the Israeli

occupation, which our tax dollars subsidize. But with the public climate

soured over Iraq, the peace movement can mobilize opinion against

military intervention in places like Venezuela.

Movements generally have power against the system when they apply

pressure to the focal point of its weakness, in this case the dramatic

waste of lives and taxes spent on an unwinnable war conducted

undemocratically. The strong popular demand to set a withdrawal

timetable is becoming impossible for the elites to avoid. When and if

withdrawal is announced, the peace movement may face serious shrinkage

and internal confusion. The phase of negotiation tends to wear movements

down. The Paris peace talks of the Vietnam era took some seven years.

The Israeli-Palestinian negotiating process appears eternal. An

exception worth examining has been the peace process in Northern Ireland.

Besides remaining a formidable factor for politicians facing close

elections and military recruiters chasing down high school students, the

peace movement has a historic role to play every day in shaping the

public understanding of the lessons of Iraq. The lessons of this war

will "prepare the battlefield," to borrow a Pentagon term, for future

wars and political campaigns. It will determine whether the current

peace movement will be limited to a single important issue or be an

embryo of a broader progressive movement.

This is the sharpest potential difference between the peace movement and

the centrists. Both can and should collaborate on military withdrawal.

But the peace movement wants to prevent future wars, reverse the nuclear

weapons momentum, end domestic spying, divert resources to domestic

priorities and, just for starters, put an end to the pattern of "armed

privatization."

These are issues the centrists and most politicians will not touch

unless they are confronted with a future climate of opinion in which

real answers are demanded. Moderates wish the war to end so that the

"real" war against terrorism can be prosecuted more effectively.

Progressives should be making the case that the Iraq War is far from a

misguided adventure but rather the result of pursuing an anti-terrorism

approach that divides the world into camps of good and evil, just as

Vietnam was the logical outcome of cold war assumptions about a

monolithic Communist conspiracy.

The national security establishment already fears this legacy of Iraq. A

December 2005 /Foreign Affairs/ article fretted about an emergent "Iraq

Syndrome

the-iraq-syndrome.html>" that parallels the "Vietnam Syndrome" of

previous decades. Based apparently on a disease-control model, the "Iraq

Syndrome" will make Americans skeptical that having the largest defense

budget is "broadly beneficial." Other Vietnam-era themes critical of

empire have re-entered through the window of the Bush era; among them,

opposition to an imperial presidency or any notion of policing the world.

If the Vietnam era left any "syndrome" behind, it was a healthy

irreverence toward power, which shows up today in antiwar marches and

parents' opposition to military recruiting. The first President Bush

prematurely believed that the "Vietnam Syndrome" was defeated in the

Persian Gulf War, but it only remained dormant until the 2003 invasion

of Iraq.

Whether a Republican or Democrat finally withdraws American troops from

Iraq, it is crucial that public opinion remain angry and critical of the

deceptions that resulted in so many needless deaths. That is the final

victory, which only the peace movement can achieve by drawing more

Americans into questioning the nature of what Robert Lifton calls "the

superpower syndrome ."