Abstract

Time to Leave

Editorial. The article presents a case for the removal of United States troops from Iraq in 2004. We have paid a heavy price for the United States President George W. Bush Administration's unnecessary and illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003: more than 800 U.S. soldiers dead. If, as war supporters claim, our goals in Iraq (now that we have lost the rationale of hunting down weapons of mass destruction) are stability and democracy, we are proceeding in exactly the wrong way. The military occupation, like other occupations throughout history, has generated a growing popular resistance that cannot be defeated militarily. The United States should continue to help Iraq by providing economic and humanitarian assistance and by supporting United Nations efforts to aid the interim government in conducting the earliest possible elections. U.S. forces themselves are a major cause of the current instability. In a poll taken by the well-regarded Iraq Center for Research and Strategic Studies before the release of the Abu Ghraib prison abuse photos, 82 percent of Iraqis said they now oppose U.S. occupation forces, and a large majority want them to leave. Bush and his advisers, so reckless with U.S. and Iraqi lives (more than 10,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed in this war) and so heedless of the consequences of their Iraq policies, must be held accountable--through investigations by Congress and at the ballot box in November. The current tragedy in Iraq can be laid at the door of an Administration that thought it could defy international law and the politics of the Arab world.