Phyllis Bennis and Erik Leaver
Institute for Policy Studies

“There is an old military doctrine called the First Rule of Holes: If you find yourself stuck in one, stop digging.”

–the late Rear Admiral Eugene Carroll, US Navy (Ret.)

Those who advocate “staying the course” or “internationalizing the war” are too busy digging deeper. A real solution to the Iraq War must start with ending the U.S. occupation. Then, and only then, we can talk about internationalizing the peace.

But this raises serious questions. How should the occupation end and the peace be internationalized? Even if the war is wrong, will it make things worse if the U.S. pulls out? Having invaded and occupied Iraq, what are our responsibilities to the Iraqi people? How can the chances for civil war be minimized? Bennis and Leaver offer steps that follow progressive principles while offering realistic steps to help put the U.S. back on the side of the rule of law, and gives the people of Iraq the best chance of rebuilding their devastated country and moving towards peace, justice and security.

The U.S. in Iraq : Two Years of War

The Iraq War has, like the Vietnam War of a generation ago, sorely divided the people of the United States. The invasion, occupation and continuing war have brought about the death of over 1,300 young women and men serving in the U.S. military. Over 10,000 have been seriously injured. Thousands are returning home with grievous mental and emotional damage. Civil rights, particularly those of Arab immigrants and Arab-Americans, have been shredded. The $151 billion in U.S. tax dollars spent on the war, not to mention the $100 billion more Congress will soon be asked to allocate, has wrought havoc on the economy and dramatically escalated the deficit.

Iraqis have suffered far more. Their country has been shattered by military assaults, and continues to languish under a violent occupation and brutal war. Cities such as Fallujah have been virtually destroyed by U.S. military forces claiming to “liberate” the now-deserted city of 300,000. The ruin of Fallujah, and so much of Iraq, by U.S. forces recalls the words of the great writer Tacitus, who followed Rome’s legionnaires as they laid waste to the empire’s far-flung cities. “The Romans brought devastation,” he wrote, “and they called it peace.”

By Robert Fisk
The Independent
Posted at SelvesAndOthers.org

They live beneath old fly-blown tents in the car-park of the Mustafa mosque and their canvas-roofed kitchen stands next to a pool of raw sewage, but the refugees from Fallujah will not return home.

First, because many have no homes to go to; second, because they are - with the encouragement of local clerics - listing a series of demands that include the withdrawal of all American soldiers from the city, the maintenance of security by Fallujans themselves, massive compensation payments and the return of money and valuables which those who have just visited Fallujah say were stolen by American troops.

And they are very definitely not going to vote in the 30 January elections. Squatting on the floor of his concrete-walled office in his black robes to eat a lunch of chicken and rice, Sheikh Hussein - he pleads with me not to print his family name - insists that his people are not against elections.

By Robert Fisk

JOURNALISM yields a world of cliches but here, for once, the first cliché that comes to mind is true. Baghdad is a city of fear. Fearful Iraqis, fearful militiamen, fearful American soldiers, fearful journalists.

That day upon which the blessings of democracy will shower upon us, 30 January, is approaching with all the certainty and speed of doomsday. The latest Zarqawi video shows the killing of six Iraqi policemen. Each is shot in the back of the head, one by one. A survivor plays dead. Then a gunman walks up behind him and blows his head apart with bullets. These images haunt everyone. At the al-Hurriya intersection yesterday morning, four truckloads of Iraqi national guardsmen - the future saviours of Iraq, according to George Bush - are passing my car. Their rifles are porcupine quills, pointing at every motorist, every Iraqi on the pavement, the Iraqi army pointing their weapons at their own people. And they are all wearing masks - black hoods or ski-masks or keffiyahs that leave only slits for frightened eyes. Just before it collapsed finally into the hands of the insurgents last summer, I saw exactly the same scene in the streets of Mahmoudiya, south of Baghdad. Now I am watching them in the capital.

At Kamal Jumblatt Square beside the Tigris, two American Humvees approach the roundabout. Their machine-gunners are shouting at drivers to keep away from them. A big sign in Arabic on the rear of each vehicle says: “Forbidden. Do not overtake this convoy. Stay 50 metres away from it.”

By Robert Fisk

Who said this and when?

“The people of England have been led in Mesopotamia into a trap from which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honour. They have been tricked into it by a steady withholding of information. The Baghdad communiques are belated, insincere, incomplete. Things have been far worse than we have been told, our administration more bloody and inefficient than the public knows… We are today not far from a disaster.”

By Milan Rai
CRITICISING THE LANCET

As soon as the Lancet, the world’s leading medical journal, published an estimate that 98,000 Iraqis have died because of the invasion and occupation of Iraq, the British Government attempted to undermine this work.

The Lancet estimate (usually approximated to 100,000 deaths) includes Iraqi civilians and insurgents, and includes all causes of death, whether violent or nonviolent, and whether they were caused by foreigners (such as US pilots) or by Iraqis themselves.