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If America Left Iraq: The Case for Cutting and Running

In this well-written article, Nir Rosen makes a cogent case for withdrawing the troops from Iraq, for "cutting and running", while astutely refuting each claim for 'staying the course'.

Nir Rosen, a fellow at the New America Foundation, spent sixteen months reporting from Iraq after the American invasion. His book, In the Belly of the Green Bird: The Triumph of the Martyrs in Iraq, will be published in February.

If America Left Iraq: The Case for Cutting and Running
by Nir Rosen

" At some point-whether sooner or later-U.S. troops will leave Iraq. I have spent much of the occupation reporting from Baghdad, Kirkuk, Mosul, Fallujah, and elsewhere in the country, and I can tell you that a growing majority of Iraqis would like it to be sooner. As the occupation wears on, more and more Iraqis chafe at its failure to provide stability or even electricity, and they have grown to hate the explosions, gunfire, and constant war, and also the daily annoyances: having to wait hours in traffic because the Americans have closed off half the city; having to sit in that traffic behind a U.S. military vehicle pointing its weapons at them; having to endure constant searches and arrests. Before the January 30 elections this year the Association of Muslim Scholars-Iraq's most important Sunni Arab body, and one closely tied to the indigenous majority of the insurgency-called for a commitment to a timely U.S. withdrawal as a condition for its participation in the vote. (In exchange the association promised to rein in the resistance.) It's not just Sunnis who have demanded a withdrawal: the Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who is immensely popular among the young and the poor, has made a similar demand. So has the mainstream leader of the Shiites' Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, Abdel Aziz al-Hakim, who made his first call for U.S. withdrawal as early as April 23, 2003."

Read rest of this article here (from Common Dreams News Center)

posted by Annamarie at 11:14 PM