[Marxism] Howard Zinn: "Support our troops: Bring them home"

["Walter Lippmann" <walterlx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Outstanding column by Howard Zinn, and all the more
remarkable for its appearance in the MIAMI HERALD.
I wouldn't be surprised if it's also not published
in Juventud Rebelde, which often reprints columns
like this by Zinn, Chomsky, Jim Lobe and others.

This should be made into the text of a leaflet to
be used to build anti-war protests everywhere in
the United States. It is written in precisely the
kind of political language that ordinary people in
the United States can and will understand, if it
can be placed in their hands. The fact that the
MIAMI HERALD publishes this is a profound sign of
the depth of anti-war sentiment in the US today.


Walter Lippmann, CubaNews
http://www.walterlippmann.com
=================================================

MIAMI HERALD
Posted on Sat, Jan. 22, 2005

IRAQ
Support our troops: Bring them home

BY HOWARD ZINN
pmproj@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

We must withdraw our military from Iraq, the sooner the
better. The reason is simple: Our presence there is a
disaster for the American people and an even bigger
disaster for the Iraqi people.

It is a strange logic to declare, as so many in Washington
do, that it was wrong for us to invade Iraq but right for
us to remain. A recent New York Times editorial sums up the
situation accurately: ``Some 21 months after the American
invasion, United States military forces remain essentially
alone in battling what seems to be a growing insurgency,
with no clear prospect of decisive success any time in the
foreseeable future.''

And then, in an extraordinary non sequitur: ``Given the
lack of other countries willing to put up their hands as
volunteers, the only answer seems to be more American
troops, and not just through the spring, as currently
planned. . . . Forces need to be expanded through
stepped-up recruitment.''

Here is the flawed logic: We are alone in the world in this
invasion. The insurgency is growing. There is no visible
prospect of success. Therefore, let's send more troops? The
definition of fanaticism is that when you discover that you
are going in the wrong direction, you redouble your speed.

In all of this, there is an unexamined premise: that
military victory would constitute ``success.''

Conceivably, the United States, possessed of enormous
weaponry, might finally crush the resistance in Iraq. The
cost would be great. Already, tens of thousands, perhaps
hundreds of thousands, have lost their lives (and we must
not differentiate between ''their'' casualties and ''ours''
if we believe that all human beings have an equal right to
life.) Would that be a ``success''?

In 1967, the same arguments that we are hearing now were
being made against withdrawal in Vietnam. The United States
did not pull out its troops for six more years. During that
time, the war killed at least one million more Vietnamese
and perhaps 30,000 U.S. military personnel.

We must stay in Iraq, it is said again and again, so that
we can bring stability and democracy to that country. Isn't
it clear that after almost two years of war and occupation
we have brought only chaos, violence and death to that
country, and not any recognizable democracy?

Can democracy be nurtured by destroying cities, by bombing,
by driving people from their homes?

There is no certainty as to what would happen in our
absence. But there is absolute certainty about the result
of our presence -- escalating deaths on both sides.

The loss of life among Iraqi civilians is especially
startling. The British medical journal Lancet reports that
100,000 civilians have died as a result of the war, many of
them children. The casualty toll on the American side
includes more than 1,350 deaths and thousands of maimed
soldiers, some losing limbs, others blinded. And tens of
thousands more are facing psychological damage in the
aftermath.

Have we learned nothing from the history of imperial
occupations, all pretending to help the people being
occupied?

The United States, the latest of the great empires, is
perhaps the most self-deluded, having forgotten that
history, including our own: our 50-year occupation of the
Philippines, or our long occupation of Haiti (1915-1934) or
of the Dominican Republic (1916-1924), our military
intervention in Southeast Asia and our repeated
interventions in Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala.

Our military presence in Iraq is making us less safe, not
more so. It is inflaming people in the Middle East, and
thereby magnifying the danger of terrorism. Far from
fighting ''there rather than here,'' as President Bush has
claimed, the occupation increases the chance that enraged
infiltrators will strike us here at home.

In leaving, we can improve the odds of peace and stability
by encouraging an international team of negotiators,
largely Arab, to mediate among the Sunnis, Shiites and
Kurds and work out a federalist compromise to give some
autonomy to each group. We must not underestimate the
capacity of the Iraqis, once free of both Saddam Hussein
and the U.S. occupying army, to forge their own future.

But the first step is to support our troops in the only way
that word support can have real meaning -- by saving their
lives, their limbs, their sanity. By bringing them home.

Howard Zinn is author of the best-selling A People's
History of the United States.



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