America must quit Iraq

The “Pottery Barn” rule invoked with regard to Iraq by the United States secretary of state, Colin Powell, says: if you break it, you own it. Even many who did not support the Bush administration’s decision to go to war against Iraq subscribe to this credo. The conventional wisdom is that the United States must fix what we broke in Iraq. We must – no matter how long it takes or how great the cost – create a peaceful and stable country. If not a perfect democracy, the argument goes, then something better than the current situation, and certainly better than Saddam Hussein’s brutal regime.

After Abu Ghraib, and amidst continuing Iraqi insurgency, what should the United States do? Charles V. Peña is responding to John C. Hulsman’s openDemocracy article, “High noon for Rumsfeld?” (May 2004)

President Bush declares that he will “stay the course” in Iraq (without disclosing the details of what this entails). His adversary in the presidential race, John Kerry, shares the same commitment – though he would add more American troops, internationalise the mission, and deploy a Nato security force.

Even now, only a few voices (although the number seems to be growing, particularly amongst those who originally supported the war) suggest a radically different option: that the United States needs to exit Iraq.

But that is exactly America’s responsibility.

We must acknowledge that the insurgents in Iraq, with the exception of al-Qaida infiltrators, are not a direct threat to the United States: they are a threat only to US troops occupying Iraq. Ironically, at least some of these insurgents are the same people who cheered America’s overthrow of Saddam’s brutal dictatorship. Now, they are fighting a foreign occupier for control of their own country. In other words, these are not people who would travel thousands of miles to attack the US homeland.

We must recognise a simple truth: that the war in Iraq is not a war of national survival for the United States.

The Bush administration’s original estimate for the cost of the Iraq war was $50-$60 billion. Former Bush economic adviser Larry Lindsey was rebuked when he suggested that the war would cost $200 billion, but this is closer to the truth than the administration’s optimistic prediction. According to the non-partisan Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA), by the end of the current fiscal year (September 2004), the cost of the Iraq war will total $100 billion, and likely reach $150 billion by September 2005 – three times the original White House estimate. And these figures do not include the costs of reconstruction (estimated at $60-$100 billion). Many experts now project that the war and projected continuing occupation could total more than $300 billion over the next decade.

We Americans must acknowledge that, with a budget deficit expected to exceed $500 billion in 2004, Iraq is a war that we cannot afford.

But it’s not just a matter of money. In April 2003, one Iraqi expressed this sentiment: “We thank the Americans for getting rid of Saddam’s regime, but now Iraq must be run by Iraqis.” A year later, a USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll found 71% of Iraqis viewing US forces mostly as occupiers; 58% believing that US troops had conducted themselves badly; 52% thinking that attacks against US forces in Iraq can be justified; and 57% wanting those forces to leave immediately.

The civil society researcher Yahia Said gives a fascinating assessment of current Iraqi public opinion towards the occupation, in “An Iraqi’s impressions” (May 2004)

The conclusion is inescapable: the United States has overstayed its welcome. And this was before the revelations of abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison. The damage caused by Abu Ghraib may be irreparable. After all, you cannot un-violate someone or resuscitate someone who is dead. And it is more than just the individual Iraqis who have been abused and humiliated. The abusive actions, regardless of who is responsible, are seen as humiliating actions against Iraqi society, against the people of the Middle East, and against Muslims in general.

Also on openDemocracy: Maï Ghoussoub, Isabel Hilton, Paul Rogers, Todd Gitlin and Laila Kazmi on the fallout from Abu Ghraib

The scale of the acts of torture and brutality – including beatings, rapes, and deaths – inflicted by Saddam Hussein’s regime on the Iraqi people far exceeds those committed by the US military (even as the full facts of Abu Ghraib await publication). Unfortunately, Iraqis, Arabs, and Muslims are not likely to care about that distinction.

More important, Saddam’s actions were no different than what people already believed and expected of him. The world has every right to expect differently of the United States. If justice is served (although one has to ask whether the defense department should investigate itself in this matter), we may be able to show Iraqis and the Muslim world that we are, in fact, not the same as Saddam – indeed (as my friend John Hulsman rightly insists) we must do this to remain true to our own principles. But that may not be enough to regain their trust if, in their eyes, Abu Ghraib is a hypocrisy that cannot be explained away no matter how thoroughly and fairly justice is pursued.

A time to choose

The sum total of all this is that America’s presence and actions in Iraq – however noble and well-intentioned – are effectively increasing rather than diminishing the terrorist threat to Americans in the United States. Iraq is now our own version of Israeli occupation of the West Bank, only across a much larger territory and with spillover effects throughout the Muslim world. We are providing the fuel for extreme anti-American sentiment that breeds hatred, itself a stepping-stone to violence and terrorism. We continue to deny this fact because we mistakenly assume that “they” hate us for who “we” are. We refuse to acknowledge that the crucial factor is what we do.

We know that the presence (now largely ended) of 5,000 US troops in Saudi Arabia after the Gulf war of 1991 was a basis for Osama bin Laden’s hatred of the United States and one of his stated reasons for engaging in terrorism, including the devastating attacks of 11 September 2001 that killed more than 3,000 people. This is precisely why we must remove 130,000 troops from Iraq. This should be done sooner rather than later – within months, not years, of handing sovereignty back to the Iraqi people on 30 June 2004.

But isn’t this appeasement? Won’t we be handing the terrorists a victory? What the Bush administration has never understood is that we gave them their victory when we invaded Iraq. We confirmed the radicals’ claim that America is invading the heart of Islam. The question is whether we give them an even bigger victory – at greater cost to us – by staying longer. We can leave now on our terms. Or we can run the risk of being forced to leave at a later date under conditions that make our defeat inescapable.

Finally, there are those who argue that if the United States leaves Iraq, many Iraqis (perhaps thousands) will die – particularly those who have supported the coalition. I acknowledge this possibility. Do I not care about their fate? What about their future? Doesn’t the United States have a responsibility to them? My answer is that while I care about their fate, I care more about the fate and future of my 5-year-old daughter and other young Americans. They deserve to grow up without having to fear riding on a bus, hanging out at a corner cafe, or enjoying a night out at a club with their friends because these are targets of choice for terrorists. The responsibility of the United States government is first and foremost to them.

John C. Hulsman and Charles V. Peña disagree over America’s best course in Iraq. But what “first principles” should guide global citizens? For an insightful answer, see Fred Halliday’s majestic openDemocracy survey of the “global west Asian crisis”: “America and Arabia after Saddam” (May 2004)

In the depths of his repugnance at the revelations about Abu Ghraib, John Hulsman – reaffirming “first principles” in bad times – says that America is the only modern world power where the public interrogation of its secretary of defense would be witnessed. But citizens’ security comes before even public accountability; responsibility to Americans in their own homeland is the first principle that must be upheld.

So do we abandon all those Iraqis who cooperated with the United States-led coalition and fear they would be targeted for death? No. We can offer them a new home in the US – or perhaps another coalition country – where they would be safe from reprisal. Certainly, this would be less costly than maintaining 130,000 or more American troops in Iraq indefinitely. We owe them that much. But not more.