Support Our Troops: Bring Them Home

[cal04]

some snips from the article


by Howard Zinn
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.


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''?


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.


Support Our Troops: Bring Them Home

[Wapsie B]

1. Truer words

have not been spoken. This needs to be in every newspaper in the country.