Set a Date for Leaving Iraq and Start Now

By Rachelle Marshall

A MAJORITY OF Americans now agree with the rest of the world that the U.S. war on Iraq was a mistake. Yet except on the fringes of the peace movement, almost no one is seriously suggesting that we set a date and leave. When the question is raised, the usual response is that we made a mess in Iraq and we have to stay and repair the damage. If U.S. troops leave now, the argument goes, there will be civil war, perhaps a bloodbath.

It is possible that violence will continue if the Americans leave, but it is certain to continue if we we stay. The occupation that supposedly ended on June 28 is still very much in force, and the resistance is growing rather than fading. American troops continue to carry out raids, take prisoners, and guard checkpoints. American warplanes continue to bomb Fallujah and other cities. Iraqi civilians continue to die in these bombing raids.

The most provocative reminder of the U.S. presence is the three-square-mile "Green Zone," formerly the site of Saddam Hussain's sprawling palace, then the headquarters of the occupation, and now the location of a vast American Embassy. It is, as San Francisco Chronicle corrrespondent Robert Collier described it, "a bubble of Americana in the heart of a hostile nation." Inside the Zone's 20-foot concrete walls are thousands of U.S. soldiers and civilian workers, the air-conditioned homes and offices of top American and Iraqi officials, well-watered lawns, swimming pools, and recreation centers. It is from his magisterial headquarters in the Green Zone that U.S. Ambassador John D. Negroponte issues his edicts to the interim Iraqi government. Most recently he ordered that the government's offer of amnesty to prisoners should not be extended to anyone who had harmed coalition forces-to anyone, that is, who had resisted the invasion and occupation of their country.

Outside the Green Zone a war is raging, and it is the kind of war America is least prepared to fight. Warplanes, tanks, and 5,000-pound bombs are of little use when there is an elusive enemy and no clearly defined battlefield. Since May 2003, when George Bush announced the end of combat operations, car bombings, remote control bombings, kidnappings and beheadings have taken an increasing toll of Iraqi civilians and police, foreign workers, and U.S. soldiers.

The American invasion that the Bush administration said would help spread democracy in the Middle East instead destroyed the institutions and weakened the restraints that enable a civilized society to function.

Anyone seen to be associated with the Americans or with the U.S.-backed interim government is now a target, whether they are Iraqis or foreign workers. On Aug. 1 three Christian churches in Baghdad and one in northern Iraq were bombed in a series of coordinated attacks that killed at least 12 people. The million or so Iraqi Christians had been protected under the previous regime, but Muslim hardliners now associate them with the West and with George Bush's "crusade" to reshape the Arab world.

Some of the insurgents are forces loyal to Saddam Hussain, others are Iraqis seeking to end the occupation, and still others are religious hard-liners from neighboring Muslim countries. Whatever their differences, their primary objective is to get rid of the American presence in Iraq. The same desire is shared by millions of Iraqis who condemn the violence, but blame Americans for unleashing the forces responsible for it.

The only convincing argument for remaining in Iraq is that the United States owes it to the Iraqis to repair the damage caused by two U.S. invasions and 12 years of sanctions. But even that reason is proving invalid. Western firms have completed only a fraction of the promised projects. Overhead costs for highly paid private security guards, skyrocketing insurance premiums, and elaborate base camps soak up as much as 25 percent of the contracts, and administrative delays add further to the costs. As a result, Iraqis are still receiving only 60 to 80 percent of the water they need, and other basic needs are going unmet.

Corruption on the part of the occupation authorities is also a problem. The Los Angeles Times reported on July 7 that the Pentagon's inspector general has turned over to the FBI evidence that senior administration officials are using the rebuilding effort in Iraq to reward friends and favored companies with multimillion dollar no-bid contracts. According to The Washington Post, occupation authorities are using more than $2 billion in Iraqi oil money to finance contracts awarded to U.S. contractors because the Iraqi money comes with fewer restrictions and less rigorous oversight than funds appropriated by Congress. When Iraq's oil minister, Mohammed Aboush, told occupation authorities that Halliburton subsidiary KBR was performing unsatisfactorily, he was ignored. "Americans and their interests are not always the same as the Iraqi interests," he said.

Iraqis familiar with public works projects say the Iraqis could rebuild Iraq's infrastructure faster and better than outsiders. Mahmood Ahmed, director of Iraq's water ministry, complained that the ministry had been forced to wait for months for the Americans even to get started. "If you had given us the money in the beginning of this year," he told a New York Times reporter, "I think now we will be finished." Ahmed was aware that his complaint would do no good. "It's out of our control," he said. "What can we do?"

The fact is they can do nothing until the Americans leave. Rami G. Khouri , executive editor of the Daily Star in Beirut, wrote recently that "The key to restoring security has always been ending the American occupation and allowing Iraqis to safeguard and rule themselves." By immediately announcing a timetable for withdrawal, Khouri says, the United States would eliminate the single biggest reason for the bombing attacks and force the Iraqis to begin forming a credible representative government.

Khouri could have added that instead of continuing to pad the profits of huge corporations, Washington should reallocate the billions of dollars it has appropriated for reconstruction to international agencies and an independent Iraqi government. Only then will we begin to make amends for the damage we have done to Iraq and reduce some of the bitter hostility to America that exists in much of the world. But our first obligation is to call home our soldiers and our bureaucrats, give up our designs on Iraqi oil profits, and do both as quickly as possible.

Rachelle Marshall is a free-lance editor living in Stanford, CA. A member of the International Jewish Peace Union, she writes frequently on the Middle East.