[Marxism] Sacramento City Council votes 8 to 1 for troop withdrawal

[Brian Shannon <Brian_Shannon@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Council: Bring troops home



By Phillip Reese -- Bee Staff Writer
Published 2:15 am PST Wednesday, November 2, 2005
Story appeared on Page A1 of The Bee
The Sacramento City Council called Tuesday night for the "rapid and
comprehensive withdrawal of United States military personnel and bases
from Iraq," citing the financial and human costs of the war on local
resources.

The resolution, sponsored by council members Lauren Hammond and Ray
Tretheway, puts Sacramento on a short but growing list of cities
nationwide pressing for a quick withdrawal. Chicago's council recently
approved a similar measure. San Francisco made the same call a year
ago. And dozens of towns in Vermont have called for a withdrawal.


 "When enough Congress members see there are enough cities throughout
the United States saying it's time to bring our troops home, they will
come up with a good exit strategy," Hammond said.

Councilman Robbie Waters, on the other hand, said the City Council had
little business taking an official stance on an issue largely beyond
its control.

"This is a matter best left to our elected officials in Washington,
D.C.," Waters said.

The resolution, which passed 8-1 with Waters opposed, cited a number of
reasons the United States should leave Iraq soon, including:

* The deaths of more than 2,000 U.S. troops.

* The billions of dollars spent on the war, including an estimated $300
million from Sacramento alone.

* The government's failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq,
one of the reasons cited for undertaking the war.

* The "grave harm to the people of Sacramento, especially its
low-income residents and communities of color."

More than 100 people attended Tuesday's hearing, most of them opponents
of the war. Sacramento anti-war activists praised the council's
actions.

"We're not Berkeley or San Francisco," said Cres Vellucci, who is with
the Sacramento Coalition to End the War. "If our city does something
like this, it sends a message up and down the state."

It has been more than two years since the United States toppled the
regime of Saddam Hussein. Since then, hundreds of soldiers and
thousands of Iraqi civilians have died. At the same time, however, Iraq
has moved toward a democracy, recently adopting a draft constitution.

Public support for the administration's handling of the war has waned:
More than half of Americans now believe it was a mistake to send troops
to Iraq, according to the latest USA Today/CNN/Gallup Poll.

The nation is divided about when all troops should come home. In a poll
last month taken by the Scripps Survey Research Center at Ohio
University, about 48 percent of Americans said they wanted a rapid
withdrawal from Iraq, while 46 percent favored staying until Iraq is
more secure.

Even some who opposed the war aren't in favor of immediate withdrawal.
Erik Gustafson, executive director of the Washington-based Education
for Peace in Iraq Center, said the war in Iraq was a bad idea, but
leaving tomorrow would create a number of problems.

"You have insurgents who are determined to use violence to overthrow
Iraq's elected government, to derail the political process, to see the
clock set back and return to an authoritarian regime," he said,
contending that immediate troop withdrawal would allow such groups to
operate more freely. "That serves nobody's interests."

While saying he neither supported nor opposed the city's resolution and
noting that anything that stimulates discussion of Iraq is a good
thing, Gustafson said he has problems with parts of the measure's
language. The resolution doesn't do enough, he said, to note America's
responsibilities to Iraq.

"This is what is now at stake: Iraq's fledgling democracy, the violent
partitioning of Iraq, abandoning the Iraq people once again," said
Gustafson, a veteran of the first Gulf War.

On the other hand, others who opposed the war think it's time for
America to leave. Michael Schwartz, a professor of sociology at the
State University of New York at Stony Brook who has written against the
war for several left-leaning publications, argues that the presence of
American troops in Iraq is stimulating the violent insurgency.

"It is in reaction to this brutality of this American occupation that
most of the violent acts of the insurgency take place," Schwartz said
in an interview Tuesday.
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