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FinalCall.com News
World News
Report offers blueprint for withdrawal from Iraq
By Ali Gharib
Updated Jul 14, 2008 - 9:16:00 PM
WASHINGTON (IPS/GIN) - A group of analysts and politicians has finally put together a coherent answer to the question of how a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq could be accomplished responsibly.
The Task Force for a Responsible Withdrawal for Iraq released its report, “Quickly, Carefully and Generously: The Necessary Steps for a Responsible Withdrawal from Iraq,” on June 25.
The report does not address the underlying reasons for why the withdrawal option is the best one—that case, it says, has already been compellingly made. Instead it focuses on how such a withdrawal could be responsibly carried out.
Rep. Jim McGovern, one of three workshop participants from Congress, said that whenever the topic of withdrawal is broached, the George W. Bush administration screams, “bloodbath,” raising the specter of Iraq descending into chaos and igniting regional wars.
But far-fetched warnings of worst-case scenarios aside, the alternative of, as the report puts it, withdrawing “U.S. troops while pursuing a diplomatic and political solution to Iraq’s civil conflict” is out there.
“What we need to argue is how,” Rep. McGovern said during a media conference call to discuss the report. “The alternative to not doing anything and not talking about this is resigning to the status quo.”
The report lays out a comprehensive plan for withdrawal of U.S. forces by internationalizing what is currently the U.S. role as the center of political power and humanitarian aid in Iraq, engaging in regional dialogue to stem outside interference in Iraq and convincing neighboring friends and foes alike to take a constructive role in reconstruction and development, and fomenting Iraqi reconciliation with international and regional support.
Part of the plan is to create a true national reconciliation between the sometimes fighting and always feuding Iraqi sectarian and political factions. Such a reconciliation would be accomplished by a U.S.-endorsed process of a UN-led “pan-Iraqi conference” that would draft an Iraqi national accord.
While the U.S. media often toes the Bush line that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is making progress toward reconciliation, the Iraqi government has yet to significantly accommodate other disenfranchised minority political and sectarian groups. Organizing committee member Chris Toensing of the Middle East Research and Information Project disputed this notion, noting that though the civil war had cooled down, the political structural problems still existed.
“Genuine national reconciliation in Iraq—which is the key to progress on every other front—requires addressing these structural political problems,” he said.
The Task Force also called for robust diplomacy with all of Iraq’s neighbors, including the U.S. regional adversaries Syria and Iran.
The report “shines a spotlight on many policy ideas that don’t get enough attention here in Washington,” said the Center for American Progress’ Brian Katulis, “and one of them is the need for stepped-up diplomacy.”
Syria and Iran, despite their important role in the region and particularly in Iraq, have yet to be meaningfully engaged by the Bush administration.
“We’re changing the rules of the game and we’re changing the incentive structure radically for the neighbors to be engaged,” Mr. Toensing said. He stressed the importance of diplomacy under a UN lead and that the Bush administration has made, at best, half-hearted efforts at engagements.
“Iran and Syria would not be approached hat in hand by the U.S.,” he said, “but rather, by the UN as an equal partner in trying to promote stability in Iraq.”
“Wider diplomatic outreach” with all the neighbors, including Sunni powers, “and trying to bring them together into a more comprehensive and sustained security dialogue about Iraq” is an important step toward a constructive regional role, said George Washington University professor Marc Lynch.
The report also calls for a short-term extension of the current UN mandate for the presence of foreign troops as a means to cover U.S. troops from prosecution as they prepare to withdraw. The Bush administration, in contrast, plans to sign a controversial bilateral agreement with the government of Prime Minister al-Maliki to continue the status quo of U.S. troops as an occupying force.
During the initial extension, Caleb Rossiter, a counselor to Rep. Bill Delahunt, said on the press call that a longer-term UN mandate would be drawn up that would cover the withdrawal and ensuing international involvement.
Part of that, in the even longer term, could be a “blue-helmeted peacekeeping force” involving UN peacekeepers. But such a force would run the risk of exacerbating the Iraqis’ resentment of the UN, which has been brewing due to corrupt programs that benefited the dictator Saddam Hussein and UN sanctions that crippled the country in the 1990s.
Asked by IPS about the issue during the call, Task Force advisory group member Carl Conetta of the Project on Defense Alternatives said U.S. withdrawal can serve to “alter the spin on blue helmets and troops on the ground.” He said peacekeeping forces would be “invited” by Iraqi authorities.
Mr. Rossiter, whose boss, Rep. Delahunt, has been one of the most vocal opponents of the Bush-al-Maliki security agreement, said the UN will “need to be able to operate—as a new force—directly with the Iraqi government,” as opposed to the current setup, which has the UN operating through the “true force” of 160,000 U.S. troops.
A Government Accountability Office report in late June—and simultaneously rejected by the Bush administration—said some of the administration’s markers of success in Iraq have been overstated. In reality, violence is on the rise, and Bush and al-Maliki’s assertions about the readiness of Iraqi security forces are exaggerated.
