'Just World News' with Helena Cobban: Kennedy gives withdrawal movement new traction

Kennedy gives withdrawal movement new traction

Posted by Helena Cobban
January 28, 2005 6:37 PM EST | Link
Filed in Antiwar

I only just got the chance to read the excellent speech that Senator Kennedy gave last night, on Iraq. It was well argued and well framed.

Much of the press commentary focused on the fact that this was the first time a U.S. Senator called clearly for a US withdrawal from Iraq. But the way he framed his argument was more nuanced, and better grounded, than that:

First, the goal of our military presence should be to allow the creation of a legitimate, functioning Iraqi government, not to dictate it.

Creating a full-fledged democracy won�t happen overnight. We can and must make progress, but it may take many years for the Iraqis to finish the job. We have to adjust our time horizon. The process cannot begin in earnest until Iraqis have full ownership of that transition. Our continued, overwhelming presence only delays that process.

... To enhance its legitimacy in the eyes of the Iraqi people, the new Iraqi Government should begin to disengage politically from America, and we from them.

The reality is that the Bush Administration is continuing to pull the strings in Iraq, and the Iraqi people know it. We picked the date for the transfer of sovereignty. We supported former CIA operative Iyad Allawi to lead the Interim Government. We wrote the administrative law and the interim constitution that now governs Iraq. We set the date for the election, and President Bush insisted that it take place, even when many Iraqis sought delay.

It is time to recognize that there is only one choice. America must give Iraq back to the Iraqi people.

We need to let the Iraqi people make their own decisions, reach their own consensus, and govern their own country.

We need to rethink the Pottery Barn rule. America cannot forever be the potter that sculpts Iraq�s future. President Bush broke Iraq, but if we want Iraq to be fixed, the Iraqis must feel that they, not we, own it.

The Iraqi people are facing historic issues�the establishment of a government, the role of Islam, and the protection of minority rights.

The United States and the international community have a clear interest in a strong, tolerant and pluralistic Iraq, free from chaos and civil war.

Then, a very realistic, but far-reaching suggestion:

The United Nations, not the United States, should provide assistance and advice on establishing a system of government and drafting a constitution.

And then, he comes to the part about the withdrawal strategy:

The Iraqi people do not believe that America intends no long-term military presence in their country. Our reluctance to make that clear has fueled suspicions among Iraqis that our motives are not pure, that we want their oil, and that we will never leave. As long as our presence seems ongoing, America�s commitment to their democracy sounds unconvincing.

The President should do more to make it clear that America intends no long-term presence. He should disavow the permanence of our so-called �enduring� military bases in Iraq. He should announce that America will dramatically reduce the size of the American Embassy -- the largest in the world.

Once the elections are behind us and the democratic transition is under way, President Bush should immediately announce his intention to negotiate a timetable for a drawdown of American combat forces with the new Iraqi Government.

At least 12,000 American troops and probably more should leave at once, to send a stronger signal about our intentions and to ease the pervasive sense of occupation.

As Major General William Nash, who commanded the multinational force in Bosnia, said in November, a substantial reduction in our forces following the Iraqi election �would be a wise and judicious move� to demonstrate that we are leaving and �the absence of targets will go a long way in decreasing the violence."

America�s goal should be to complete our military withdrawal as early as possible in 2006.

President Bush cannot avoid this issue. The Security Council Resolution authorizing our military presence in Iraq can be reviewed at any time at the request of the Iraqi Government, and it calls for a review in June. The U.N. authorization for our military presence ends with the election of a permanent Iraqi government at the end of this year. The world will be our judge. We must have an exit plan in force by then.

While American troops are drawing down, we must clearly be prepared to oppose any external intervention in Iraq or the large-scale revenge killing of any group. We should begin now to conduct serious regional diplomacy with the Arab League and Iraq�s neighbors to underscore this point, and we will need to maintain troops on bases outside Iraq but in the region.

The United Nations could send a stabilization force to Iraq if it is necessary and requested by the Iraqi government. But any stabilization force must be sought by the Iraqis and approved by the United Nations, with a clear and achievable mission and clear rules of engagement. Unlike the current force, it should not consist mostly of Americans or be led by Americans. All nations of the world have an interest in Iraq�s stability and territorial integrity.

All very good sense, so far. It is only at the third and last plank of Kennedy's position that I have serious reservations:

The current training program is in deep trouble, and Iraqi forces are far from being capable, committed, and effective. In too many cases, they cannot even defend themselves, and have fled at the first sign of battle.

Well, I have no disagreement at all with that last bit of diagnosis. But the prescription he gives-- that "we" (i.e. the US) should be training up the new Iraqi forces? I don't think so!

Actually, the problem in Iraq is notably not one of people lacking military training. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have that! The real problem is that of motivating the Iraqi soldiers to rally around the leadership of their legitimate government. Of which, right now, they don't have one.

Indeed, the Americans are almost the last people on the earth who are in a position to lead the effective reconstruction of the Iraqi armed forces, given (1) the hostility and polarization that their presence has already engendered throughout most of the country, and (2) the deep, underlying lack of legitimacy of the US troop presence in Iraq.

So I think that when Sen. Kennedy is talking about the need for the UN to have a real role in Iraq-- both politically, and in leading a possible "Stabilization Force" in the country-- he should also be talking about the UN giving whatever technical help the Iraqis might need, in order to reconstitute their armed forces.

They might not need that much help-- though certainly, South Africa and many other countries could give them pointers on how to transform large armed forces once loyal to a dictatorship into a much smaller force structure whose role is to defend a democracy under the norms of democratic force management.

Hey, the US has already had a crack at rebuilding the Iraqi forces-- for more than 18 months now. And time after time after time we have seen that the result has been the dissolution of those forces when they come under test. Why should Senator Kennedy or anyone else pretend that this is something the Iraqis might still "need" ther US forces for?

Still, disagreeing with that last point of the Senator's is a small matter. The main thing is, he has given the pro-withdrawal movement in the US significant new political traction.

Comments

Comment from... Dominic, at January 28, 2005 09:26 PM:

Hi, Helena,

All your recent referances to South Africa have made me think hard.

This first quote of yours from Sen. Kennedy can maybe help me get started: "The beginning of wisdom in this crisis is to define honest and realistic goals."

I think a better starting point mught be to expose the actual goals of the actual US aggression, which are still being operationalised at this moment.

I don't think the US can be allowed to have any goals at all in Iraq, or anywhere else apart from the USA itself.

I have a big difficulty with your idea of "transition", presuming it means "transition to democracy" in the short term. We in SA didn't get so very far forward in 1994. What we got was that astonishing demonstration of collective public will. But the work we might call "building democracy" has been going on at a steady pace for a very long time, and still goes on.

Perhaps you know that this year is the fiftieth anniversary of the adoption of the South African Freedom Charter? So this year the African National Congress has declared a "year of the Freedom Charter" to remind us of how much remains to be done.

Perhaps this is part of what Kennedy is saying, i.e. there is no such thing as a single "transition moment". So that is good, if that is what he means.

But then if you are looking at the longer term, you must look at the strategic realities in that long term, and if there is a predatory relationship in the strategic frame, it must be outed. Kennedy fails to do this, in my opinion. As a US senator and Democratic Party member he can't really do it, because he is beholden to the same corporate hegemony as everybody else in the US. Or is that too cynical?

Iraq's future is more than a matter of sensible management. If a crime has been committed and continues to be committed, it must be recognised as such, or there is no justice. That is also a lesson from South Africa. We can just about live with our situation because it is mostly out in the open, thanks partly to Bishop Tutu and others.

To live with Fallujah and Abu Ghraib and the rest the Iraqis will need more than an election or new "honest and realistic" goals from the US, as suggested by Kennedy. They will need truth about the past and the present.

Comment from... Helena, at January 28, 2005 10:40 PM:

Dominic, thanks for calling me on the "transition= transition to democracy" issue. You were right to. I've been thinking a lot about this, too. What is needed is a transition to national sovereignty and independence. Non-Iraqis can "suggest" that this or that specific form of governance might be preferable. But I agree with what I understand to be your position that the US government should be given no say on what that form should be.

I was actually at a really interesting conference on "transitional justice" yesterday, and I intend to blog about it in the next day or two. One thing that was evident was the need for clarity about what kind of "transition" everyone is talking about, since otherwise people can talk right past each other and/or propose off-the-shelf policy prescriptions that simply don't fit.

Comment from... salah Alamin, at January 29, 2005 05:42 AM:

Hi Helenna
Quote of yours
"We need to rethink the Pottery Barn rule. America cannot forever be the potter that sculpts Iraq�s future. President Bush broke Iraq, but if we want Iraq to be fixed, the Iraqis must feel that they, not we, own it"

After two years you and some Americans realised this....! good

Quote from you

"But if we want Iraq to be fixed, the Iraqis must feel that they, not we, own it"

I rewrite this for you

"But if we want Iraq to be fixed, the Americans must feel that they, don�t own Iraq, and leave Iraq to Iraqis"

From HAMMURABI'S CODE OF LAWS (2500 BC) is its commitment to protection of the weak from being brutalized by the strong.
I chose this one

251. If an ox be a goring ox, and it shown that he is a gorer, and he do not bind his horns, or fasten the ox up, and the ox gore a free-born man and kill him, the owner shall pay one-half a mina in money.

Comment from... Helena, at January 29, 2005 08:33 AM:

Salah, that's a thought-provoking point you make.

However, the quote you attribute to me was actually from Sen. Kennedy's speech. That might have been unclear, the way I presented it in the blog, since the fact that it was indented wasn't clear at the "jump" off the front page. Sorry about that.

Comment from... Christiane, at January 29, 2005 11:41 AM:

It is a new and positive development that eventually some Democrats openly call for a withdrawal in Senate, although I share the opinion of Dominic : it's not enough. The US is guilty of an aggression war and should be held accountable for it and pay compensations to the Iraqis for all the destructions.

Concerning the UN role, unlike Helena, I'm not sure whether it's still a "realistic" option. The US has put so much pressures on the UN in the Iraq case and has done so much in order to descredite its action in general, that I'm not sure whether the Iraqis can still see the UN as a neutral body.

Iraqis have been very receptive to both the neocons and Chalabi's attempts to smear the UN. As a result, I've heard many negative opinions concerning the UN action in the mouth of Iraqis bloggers and surfers. Of course, the UN was distributing the food ratio tickets, trying to alleviate the effects of the years long economic blockade, but she was also responsible for the UN humiliating inspections and the food ratio tickets were there because the UNSC aproved the economic sanctions in the first place.

Are there other alternatives (to the US or the UN) ? Clearly, there seem to be only one : the Iraqis themselves. May be that the right question isn't "Who can help the Iraqis", but whether they need/want help ?"

Comment from... Hammurabi, at January 29, 2005 06:15 PM:

yes, Iraq is ultimately for the Iraqis...not for the US, UN, Iran, al-Zarqawi and his merry band of beheaders, etc...if the newly elected National Assembly asks the Coalition to leave, they should begin packing immediately.

Comment from... Christiane, at January 30, 2005 05:34 AM:

"We have a year to get out", calls Robin Cook along with two other Brittish members of different political parties yesterday. They are asking for a withdrawal of UK troops. I wasn't able to find the original call, but here are the reports of the Times and for the Guardian.

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