Anthony Arnove is the editor, with Howard Zinn, of Voices of a People's History of the United States. He is also the editor of Iraq Under Siege: The Deadly Impact of Sanctions and War and of Terrorism and War, a collection of post–September 11 interviews with Howard Zinn. Arnove's writing has appeared in Financial Times, The Nation, In These Times, Monthly Review, Z, and many other publications. He lives in New York City. His most recent book is Iraq: The Logic of Withdrawal, updated paperback edition (New York: Henry Holt/Metropolitan Books/The American Empire Project, 2007). The book is available at http://www.americanempireproject.com/bookpage.asp?ISBN=0805082727.
Kevin Zeese: I see two broad types of groups that need to be convinced that we should get out of Iraq. The first are people who believe that the war was wrong, but now that we are there we have to finish the job, stabilize the country, make things better. These folks believe that if we leave things will certainly get worse. What do you say to these folks?
Anthony Arnove: I'd say make the same points to both groups. More than 3,000 U.S. soldiers are dead and more than 22,000 wounded, many grievously. Every day that toll mounts. Tens of thousands of Iraqis have died. The Haditha massacre, the Mahmoudiya rape-murder, and the torture at Abu Ghraib are not aberrations but reflections of the brutality of a colonial occupation. The social and economic costs of this war grow every day in communities across the country as money is diverted from schools, health care, jobs, and other vital social programs to fuel this unjust occupation. The war abroad has gone hand in hand with a war on our civil liberties at home, with a massive expansion of the government's power to detain people without trial, to use secret evidence, and to use torture. Meanwhile, every day that the United States is in Iraq, the situation gets worse and civil war becomes more -- not less -- likely. The U.S. occupation is distorting every aspect of Iraqi society and is the root of the problem.
In terms of how things will be once the U.S. withdraws, each day longer the United States stays, the possibilities of a livable outcome diminish. Which is why, in addition to pushing for immediate withdrawal, we also need to call on the United States and its allies to pay reparations to the Iraqi people (not just for the destruction caused by the most recent illegal invasion and occupation but before that the devastating sanctions, the toxic legacy and destruction of the 1991 Gulf War, and all the years that the U.S. armed and supported Saddam Hussein as he carried out his worst crimes). They can do a far better job rebuilding their country than the corporate looters and thugs of Halliburton, Bechtel, and Blackwater can.
KZ: The other group are people who think that the U.S. went in for good reasons -- to overthrow a tyrant -- and issues like WMD or link to 9/11 are no longer all that important, since the U.S. made the world better by getting rid of Saddam Hussein. What do you say to these people?
AA: The invasion of Iraq has made the world a far more dangerous place, increasing anger at the United States, encouraging other states such as Russia, Israel, China, and Pakistan to assert the right to launch so-called preemptive strikes, and fueling a renewed global arms race, including a nuclear arms race that threatens the extinction of the human species.
Iraqis are far more likely to die violently in Iraq today than they were under the dictatorship. They have less electricity and less access to safe drinking water than before the occupation, when they were still subjected to comprehensive sanctions. Unemployment has skyrocketed (while contractors hire foreign workers rather than Iraqis). Iraqis are afraid to send their children to school or to leave their homes or to live in formerly integrated neighborhoods. Inflation has put basic necessities beyond the reach of Iraqis. Iraq is the world's worst refugee crisis, with, according to the U.S. government, 2 million external and 1.7 million internal refugees. Large sections of Baghdad have been ethnically cleansed.
It's important to remember that the worst crimes of Saddam Hussein were enabled and defended by the United States and other Western powers. And today the United States continues to support a range of brutal dictatorships throughout Western and Central Asia and the Middle East.
The invasion of Iraq did not occur because members of the Bush administration could not sleep at night thinking about human rights abuses in Iraq, but because, in the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, Washington planners saw an opportunity to advance an agenda of dominating the energy resource of the Middle east and using that regional hegemony to project U.S. power globally.
KZ: What is the step-by-step withdrawal that you recommend? Do you recommend any peace keeping forces? If so, from where?
AA: I spoke on a panel recently with an Iraq war veteran, a member of an important group called Iraq Veterans Against the War (http://www.ivaw.org/), who said, quite rightly, "Withdrawal is not a strategy. It's an executive order." The U.S. military would be capable of removing troops very quickly if the government were to acknowledge its defeat in Iraq, rather than persisting on its current destructive course.
The problem with all the proposals for timetables for withdrawal is that they are based on endlessly receding horizon. The people who will evaluate whether or not certain "benchmarks" have been met are the very people now building long-term military bases and setting up the largest U.S. embassy in the world in Iraq, and who have so much at stake in "winning" the war in Iraq.
President Bush has said it will be up to the next president to decide when troops will come home (recall how the Vietnam war was passed back and forth from Democrats and Republicans), and the recent budget Bush delivered to Congress would provide funding for troops into the year 2009. More fundamentally, we also have to be clear: the United States has no right to be in Iraq in the first place. They entered the country on utterly false pretexts. Their presence is the negation of democracy for the Iraqi people. Once U.S. troops leave, it is up too the Iraqi people whether or not they want peacekeeping forces or other assistance. That's their decision, not ours, to make.
KZ: What about the economic take-over of Iraq. I agree with the thesis Antonia Juhasz (see http://democracyrising.us/content/view/483/151/) that the root cause of the Iraq takeover was to gain economic control over the oil rich region. Bremer's 100 orders, which have been confirmed by the Iraqi Constitution, have transformed Iraq from a state-controlled economy, to an economy for the multi-nationals. Should this be reversed? How should it be reversed?
AA: The economic take-over of Iraq absolutely should be reversed. Antonia Juhasz is right, as Naomi Klein, who has also written very powerfully on this topic. Klein writes that "The United States, having broken Iraq, is not in the process of fixing it. It is merely continuing to break the country and its people by other means, using not only F-16s and Bradleys, but now the less flashy weaponry" of economic strangulation. We need to call for an end to military and economic occupation, as well as the removal of U.S. military bases.
The Democrats will oppose the war with meaningless resolutions. You will be amazed at how happy this will make the typical anti war citizen. but as far as ending the funding? No one in congress truly wants to end the war. Especially congress people with military in their district. Either bases or industry. This war is a cash cow split wide open at the gut and spreading the Blood money not just to the elites, but far and wide.
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"Hoss" David P. (51 articles, 5 quicklinks, 14 diaries, 339 comments)
on Monday, February 12, 2007 at 2:59:39 PM
