Debating Withdrawal from Iraq

Read (or listen or watch) Naomi Klein (author of Fences and Windows and No Logo) debate
Erik Gustafson (Education for Peace in Iraq Center) on strategies for withdrawal. Look at this extract. It reveals one of the oddities of the current debate: most of those apparently arguing for immediate withdrawal do not really want immediate withdrawal at all. They are playing with the slogan for effect or because they fear that to call for anything less is to endorse Bush. Note that Naomi Klein says two incompatible things, almost within the same breathe. First, ‘we want it to end now’. Second, and in response to Gustafson’s point that a precipitate withdrawal would create chaos in Iraq, ‘I mean, nobody believes there’s going to be withdrawal tomorrow’. That’s called shifting the goalposts. Would it not be better to stop playing with the slogan ‘immediate withdrawal’ and call instead for a speedy end to the occupation via the UN-backed political process and timetable, while making urgent solidarity with the Iraqi democrats? (AJ)

Extract:

ERIK GUSTAFSON: If you want to act in solidarity with Iraqis, you need to be for withdrawal, you need to be pushing for a major policy changes that need to continue in Washington, but you cannot say that immediate withdrawal is what Iraqis are calling for. That's not what they're calling for, and they fear what would happen.

NAOMI KLEIN: Erik, what you have just described is the position of the US peace movement. And I think you're setting up a straw man here. I mean, nobody believes there’s going to be --

ERIK GUSTAFSON: That’s not --

NAOMI KLEIN: -- withdrawal tomorrow. It’s that there has to be a clear policy demand, which is an end to the occupation. Iraqis have been extremely clear about this. A majority of Iraqis voted in the election for a political party, the United Iraqi Alliance. The second plank of their platform was calling for a timetable for withdrawal. Then you have all the people who boycotted the elections because they believed that a clear statement about withdrawal was the prerequisite for having elections, that you couldn't have elections before you had that commitment. So immediately after Iraqis have expressed this through opinion polls, through protests, through their votes, the first response from the Bush administration and from Blair is, well, of course, we have to honor the Iraqis who took this risk by staying the course and not having any timetable of withdrawal. That is the political context, Erik, in which you are working, total defiance from the Bush administration, talk of keeping 170,000 troops in the region until 2007. You need a very clear, unambiguous statement that we are against this occupation, that we want it to end now. That's the starting point for any actual anti-war movement.

AMY GOODMAN: Erik Gustafson?

ERIK GUSTAFSON: I think you're absolutely right. It has to be about ending the occupation. But as soon as you say immediate withdrawal, as a solidarity organization, I mean, EPIC is a solidarity organization, and I'm talking with Iraqis all the time. And they -- there's a disconnect going on in terms of the peace movement and the Iraqi community. And that disconnect needs to end. Every time you say immediate withdrawal, you strike fear in the hearts of so many Iraqis. So we need to be much clearer. We need to be talking about a major policy shift. And I think where all of the peace movement can get behind, as well as Iraqis, where there can be genuine solidarity, is demanding that the Bush administration make a declaration that it has no claims on the territory or the resources of Iraq and intends to withdraw. Then, I think you will start to see progress. But the other thing that's very -- that I need to make very clear is part of the confusion is as though we're still on the original script. We are not on the original script. If we were still on the original script that the Bush Administration may have had in mind, that Paul Wolfowitz and other ideologues had in mind, Paul Bremer would still be in Baghdad. We would not have had the elections that just occurred. Iraq's oil resources would be privatized. That's not what's happening. The Iraqi people are pushing back, and we need to be supporting them in pushing back and also understanding that there is a transition that needs to be supported, and if the institutions of Iraq are left weak, if there's a power vacuum that we leave behind, then we will have done the most irresponsible thing. You cannot fix a mistake with another mistake. (AJ)