[Peace-discuss] Reasons against withdrawal?

[C. G. Estabrook]

[A week ago last Sunday the News-Gazette ran an attack on withdrawal 
from Iraq, written by a professor of political science at UIUC.  I 
thought it reminded us once again why "political science" is an oxymoron 
(Greek for "sharp foolishness").  I sent the paper an answer (within the 
250-word limit), below, which quotes phrases from the attack. The N-G 
may refuse to run it because they published a piece of mine, on a 
somewhat different matter, in the same issue, as if it were part of an 
arranged debate.  --CGE]


Suppose a German official had written in 1943, "The rationales 
underlying immediate troop withdrawal are deeply flawed: (1) right or 
wrong, Germany invaded France, and assessments need to be made based on 
the situation now; (2) it's wishful thinking to assume that the French 
people somehow will be able to solve any problems if left to their own 
devices; (3) the French and outside forces are to blame for much (if not 
most) of the violence; and (4) assigning a higher value to German lives 
than French ones is morally reprehensible -- a German pullout likely 
would trigger civil war with long-term costs.  Demanding a German 
withdrawal is an empty gesture."

If we could take them seriously at all, I think we would find these 
purported reasons respectively immoral, racist, propagandistic, and 
remarkably disingenuous.  Yet these are just the reasons offered in a 
recent debate in the News-Gazette [May 14] in opposition to U.S. 
withdrawal from Iraq.  A bit of historical distance allows us to see how 
specious they are.

After World War II, the German leaders were convicted by the Nuremberg 
Tribunal of launching an aggressive war.  Robert Jackson, the US 
prosecutor at Nuremberg, said, "If certain acts of violation of treaties 
are crimes, they are crimes whether the United States does them or 
whether Germany does them."

It's an elementary principle that we must apply to ourselves the same 
standards we apply to others.

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