THINKING FOR OURSELVES

A government of their own

By Shea Howell

Michigan Citizen, June 3-9, 2007

Pressure is mounting to withdraw our troops from Iraq. Many people had hoped the mid-term election results would shatter some of the Bush administration’s stubbornness. Instead, Bush responded to growing demands to withdraw by committing more troops. Now he is saying we cannot withdraw at all without creating chaos.

This lie, like so many that permeate the administration’s war effort, rests on a series of false ideas. First, Americans are told that the Iraqi government doesn’t want us to leave. This is supported by news articles quoting dire warnings by high ranking Iraqi officials that U.S. withdrawal would lead to the collapse of the Iraqi government.

Well, of course, it would. The current Iraqi government has no legitimacy. It does not have the support of the Iraqi people. Nor does it command a capable army or head an administration able to provide public services. It cannot supply electricity or water, make buses run, keep hospitals functioning or schools open. The only real thing it has been able to do, it seems, is hang Saddam Hussein and his former cabinet members, giving thin cover to the fiction that Iraqis, not the U.S., killed him after a trial that shamed all its participants.

Second, this idea that we cannot leave is presented to the American people in a way that encourages us to think that the Iraqis aren’t up to the demands of running their own country. News accounts suggest that there is some kind of learning curve that the Iraqis have not quite mastered.

A front page New York Times article conveyed this image by quoting senior military officers. “There will be a time when we will slowly remove ourselves from the Iraqi forces and allow them to take more and more control,” said Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, the commander of ground forces in Iraq. “But this should be done thoughtfully and methodically when conditions permit.” In other words, we have to give these backward folks time to develop.

Meanwhile, Iraqis are managing to send folks to Iran and back, train, equip, develop and deploy their own armies and engage U.S. troops at will. They are able to provide safety in neighborhoods, call out hundreds of thousands of people into the streets for mass demonstrations, and are beginning to create alliances across ethnic and religious divides. They are able to conduct international relations and often provide the only measure of daily safety in the country.

Last week Moqtada al Sadr, the Shiite cleric often demonized by the U.S., reached out to Sunnis trying to create a united front. As part of this effort, Sadr established a reconciliation committee to explore how to create trust between Shiites and Sunnis in an effort to reduce violence, drive out Al Quaeda, and end the U.S. occupation. Taking a stand against sectarian violence, Sadr expelled over 600 men from the Mahdi Army and pulled his members out of the current government in support of the Sunni position that they will never give it legitimacy.

U.S. withdrawal may mean the collapse of the government that Bush and his cronies put into position. But chaos need not follow. Sadr may not be the one to emerge as a leader but someone or some ones will. Those some ones will have the one thing the U.S. cannot provide: the respect and trust gained by defending their country against outsiders.

The collapse of a non-functioning government, instituted and supported by the military might of an occupation army, is nothing to fear. Governing grows from those who respond to the real needs of people struggling to secure life. Their struggles, not our guns, will ultimately provide a government of their own.

Email Shea Boggs Center,