Why we stand for immediate withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Iraq

[proud2BlibKansan]

Why we stand for immediate withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Iraq

http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/OutNow/

THE U.S. occupation of Iraq has not liberated the
Iraqi people, but has made life worse for most Iraqis.

Tens of thousands of U.S. service people have been
killed or maimed, and hundreds of thousands of
innocent Iraqis have lost their lives as a result of
the U.S. invasion in 2003, the ongoing occupation, and
the violence unleashed by them.

Iraq’s infrastructure has been destroyed, and U.S.
plans for reconstruction abandoned. There is less
electricity, less clean drinking water, and more
unemployment today than before the U.S. invasion.

All of the justifications initially provided by the
U.S. for waging war on Iraq have been exposed as lies;
the real reasons for the invasion — to control Iraq’s
oil reserves and to increase U.S. strategic influence
in the region — now stand revealed.

The Bush administration has insisted again and again
that stability, democracy, and prosperity are around
the next bend in the road. But with each day that the
U.S. stays, the violence and lack of security facing
Iraqis worsen. The U.S. says that it cannot withdraw
its military because Iraq will collapse into civil war
if it does. But the U.S. has deliberately stoked
sectarian divisions in its ongoing attempt to install
a U.S.-friendly regime, thus driving Iraq towards
civil war.

The November elections in the United States sent a
clear message that voters reject the Iraq war, and
opinion polls show that seven in 10 Iraqis want the
U.S. to leave sooner rather than later. Even most U.S.
military and political leaders agree that staying the
course in Iraq is a policy that is bound to fail.

Yet all the various alternative plans for Iraq now
being discussed in Washington, including those
proposed by House and Senate Democrats, aren’t about
withdrawing the U.S. military from Iraq. Rather, these
strategies are about continuing the pursuit of U.S.
goals in Iraq and the larger Middle East using
different means.

Even the proposal to redeploy U.S. troops outside of
Iraq, a plan favored by many Democratic Party leaders,
envisions continued U.S. intervention inside Iraq.

With former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger
insisting that a military victory in Iraq is no longer
possible and (Ret.) Lt. Gen. William Odom calling for
“complete withdrawal” of all U.S. troops, the antiwar
movement should demand no less than the immediate
withdrawal of the U.S. military — as well as
reparations to the Iraqi people, so they can rebuild
their own society and genuinely determine their own
future.

We call on the U.S. to get out of Iraq — not in six
months, not in a year, but now.

Ali Abunimah
ElectronicIraq.net

Gilbert Achcar
Author - Clash of Barbarisms

Michael Albert
Znet

Tariq Ali
Author - Bush in Babylon

Anthony Arnove
Author - Iraq: The Logic of Withdrawal

Noam Chomsky
Author - Hegemony or Survival

Kelly Dougherty
Executive Director - Iraq Veterans Against the War*

Eve Ensler
Playwright - The Vagina Monologues

Eduardo Galeano
Author - The Open Veins of Latin America

Rashid Khalidi
Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies
Columbia University

Camilo Mejía
First Iraq War resister to refuse deployment

Arundhati Roy
Author - God of Small Things

Howard Zinn
Author - A People’s History of the United States

[Monkeyman]

1. You can add the 65,000 members of Veterans For Progress IL