[Peace-discuss] Iraq, still…

[Morton K. Brussel]

A long but reasonable article on what's up in Iraq and the  
USadministration by Tom Engelhardt:

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/02/20/7159/

…You have to look to the fringes for perfectly reasonable suggestions  
on getting out. Take Professor Immanuel Wallerstein, who wrote an  
essay, “Walking Away: The Least Bad Option,” which you won’t find in  
your local paper. To him, “walking away” would mean “a statement by  
the US government that it will withdraw all troops without exception  
and shut down all bases in Iraq within say six months of the date of  
announcement.” He adds: “U.S. withdrawal would mark the first step on  
the long and difficult path to healing the United States of the  
sicknesses brought on by its imperial addiction, the first step in a  
painful effort to restore the good name of the United States in the  
world community.”

Right now, however, any form of “walking away,” itself a polite  
euphemism for retreat from a desperate stalemate or even a lost war,  
is off that “table” on which this administration has so often placed  
“all options.” As a result, if either Clinton or Obama were to win  
the next election, enter office in January 2009, and follow his or  
her present plan — a relatively long period of drawdown not leading  
to full withdrawal — he or she would, within months, simply inherit  
the President’s war. At that point, the present war supporters would  
turn on the new president with a ferocity the Democrats are incapable  
of mustering against the present one, attacking her or him as a cut- 
and-runner of the first order, even possibly even a traitor.…
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