Marin Independent Journal Op/Ed
by Lynn Woolsey January 16, 2005


It is time to take immediate steps to bring U.S. troops home from Iraq.

Twenty-two months into this conflict, it is clear that a policy which was immorally and illegitimately conceived has also been incompetently executed. From poor post-war planning, to dissolving the Iraqi army, to unsecured munitions, to insufficient armor for our troops, the President and his national security team have miscalculated at every turn.

And at an enormous cost – more than 1,300 American deaths, at least 10,000 wounded, countless innocent Iraqi civilians killed, not to mention billions of U.S. dollars spent and global good will indefinitely squandered.

And to what end? Rather than liberating Iraq, the U.S. invasion and occupation has trapped the nation and its people in a cauldron of violent civil strife. Our presence there has not engendered gratitude but bred resentment that has manifested itself in the form of a vicious insurgency. It has not stopped terrorism but emboldened Muslim extremists who hate America now more than ever. Neither Iraqis, nor Americans, nor anyone in the world is safer because of this war, and our troops are “sitting ducks.”

While the President assures us that “freedom is on the march,” there is in fact no evidence that Iraq is prepared to stand alone as a self-governing state. The continued violence will make democracy an impossibility. In the last few weeks, election workers in Mosul and the Anbar province resigned out of fear for their lives. How can there be a free, fair election without people to administer it? And if insurgent threats are scaring off election officials, how can we expect Iraqi citizens to feel safe enough to cast a ballot on January 30? Iraqi Interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi himself has admitted that parts of Iraq are too dangerous for legitimate elections to be held.

Meanwhile, the nation’s Sunni population is prepared to boycott the election, undermining the integrity of the results and possibly leading to deeper conflict with a Shiite-dominated government. Former National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft has said that this could lead to Kurdish secession and a complete national fracture. Elections designed to unify Iraq may irreparably divide it. This is what we’re sacrificing American lives for? So that Iraq can explode into civil war?

Since the run-up to the war, the Bush Administration and its surrogates have smeared as unpatriotic anyone who dissented or even deigned to ask probing questions. But that tactic no longer intimidates. The worm has turned. Late last year, respected Republicans like Senators Richard Lugar and Chuck Hagel, both on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, joined a chorus of top diplomats and military leaders in criticizing management of the Iraq war. Members of Congress are now returning from holiday recess with the Iraq-related frustration of their constituents ringing in their ears. And the New York Times reported on Monday that troop withdrawal has, for the first time, moved from a fringe opinion to a mainstream discussion point in Washington.

Removing some 130,000 soldiers from Iraq immediately is not logistically feasible. But we must take the first steps, and I am leading a dozen of my colleagues in a letter to the President urging him to do so. We should not abandon Iraq; there is still a critical role for the United States in providing the development aid that can help create a civil society, support education and rebuild Iraq’s economic infrastructure.

But the military option is clearly not working. That is not the ideological statement of someone who opposed the war on principle (though I am that); it is a sober assessment now shared across the political spectrum. It is truly time to support the troops, by bringing them home as soon as realistically possible.