[Peace-discuss] Moved On from the Struggle

[C. G. Estabrook]

	Published on Friday, March 20, 2009 by Z Net
	Moved On from the Struggle
	by Anthony Arnove

On March 2nd, the liberal organization MoveOn.org--known for mobilizing 
opposition to the Bush administration through the Internet--sent an e-mail to 
its membership that declared the U.S. war on Iraq effectively over:

"Dear MoveOn member,

"I'm sure you've heard about President Obama's plan to finally bring an end to 
the disastrous war in Iraq. It will bring most of our troops home by August of 
next year--and by the end of 2011 there won't be any more troops left in Iraq. 
This is a major turning point in the fight to end the war.

"We wanted to take a moment to reflect on the work that you've done over the 
last six, dark years...to thank you, sincerely, for all you have done...

"This war is coming to an end in part because of the work you did."

While the letter acknowledges that "our troops aren't home yet. Hundreds of 
thousands of them are still in harm's way, and will continue to be for longer 
than any of us would like," it says the bottom line is that "now there's a date 
certain for them to come home."

Reading this, I was reminded of the final line of Ernest Hemingway's novel The 
Sun Also Rises: "Isn't it pretty to think so?"

But MoveOn is not alone. Much of the antiwar movement has folded its tents. The 
Iraq war has more or less dropped out of popular consciousness altogether. And 
the media report less and less about the ongoing problems there.

So it's no surprise that the fine print of President Barack Obama's plan in Iraq 
has gone largely unexamined.

Rather than pulling all U.S. troops out of Iraq within 16 months, as most Obama 
voters understood his campaign pledge, the redeployment of forces from Iraq will 
proceed over a 19-month period and will be back-loaded to take place after 
December 2009. As the New York Times reported:

The plan would maintain relatively high troop levels through Iraq's 
parliamentary elections, to be held in December, before beginning in earnest to 
meet the August 2010 target for removing combat forces, the officials said. Even 
after August 2010, as many as 50,000 of the 142,000 troops now in Iraq would 
remain, including some combat units reassigned as "Advisory Training Brigades" 
or "Advisory Assistance Brigades," the administration and Pentagon officials said.

Obama's plan says nothing about the private contractors and mercenaries that are 
an essential part of the occupation of Iraq, and whose numbers may even be 
increased to cover functions previously provided by active-duty troops. And it 
will leave in place the world's largest foreign embassy, as well as the largest 
CIA foreign station, in Baghdad.

Obama calls the troops who will stay in Iraq through the end of 2011 "residual 
forces" and non-combat troops, but this is just doublespeak. Combat troops are 
simply being renamed non-combat troops through a verbal sleight of hand, but 
will certainly be able to use lethal force and will find themselves in combat 
situations.

And in accepting the logic of the Bush administration for not withdrawing the 
troops immediately--that they are needed to fight al-Qaeda, engage in 
"counter-insurgency operations," and continue the "war on terror"--Obama has 
opened the door to keeping them in Iraq beyond 2011.

Indeed, in his speech about the Iraq "withdrawal" plan at the end of February, 
Obama retroactively endorsed the Bush administration's stated reasons for 
invading Iraq in the first place, as the Wall Street Journal gleefully noted.


We know that Iraq will remain under occupation until at least the end of 2011, 
but there is very good reason to believe that between now and then, the Iraqi 
government, which owes its survival to Washington, will cut a deal to allow U.S. 
forces to remain longer. Such an agreement would also likely give the U.S. 
long-term access to military bases and access to Iraqi air space.
The fact remains that Iraq is a fulcrum of geopolitics and a vital front for 
U.S. military strategy in the Middle East. Washington's goals for Iraq and the 
region may be less ambitious than when the Bush administration launched its 2003 
invasion, but no one is reversing the fundamental policies driving U.S. policy: 
the goal of controlling the region's vast energy resources and being the 
hegemonic foreign power there.

MoveOn should be letting its members know this--and urging far more than to 
"keep watching Washington" to be sure they do bring the troops home. But to do 
this, the group would have to take on the Obama administration more forcefully 
on Iraq--and on the occupation of Afghanistan, which is intimately related.

Obama has said all along that he sees Afghanistan as the "central front" in the 
"war on terror," and that he would commit more troops to the war there. But 
Justin Ruben, MoveOn's new executive director, told Nation correspondent Ari 
Melber that the organization did not intend to oppose Obama's plan to send more 
troops to Afghanistan.

The message being sent to the antiwar movement is: It's over. We can "move on." 
Leave it to the generals to wind it down. But if we do that, we will find 
ourselves without the forces we need to challenge Obama and Congress.

The year 2011 is already too late to end the occupation of Iraq, which should 
never have started in the first place. And shifting troops from Iraq to 
Afghanistan is not ending the war.

Without an antiwar movement that is loud, active, in the streets and raising its 
own independent demands beyond the limits set by the Democratic Party, U.S. 
troops will not be coming home.

The empire has not folded up its tent, and neither should we.

© 2009 Anthony Arnove
Anthony Arnove is the author of Iraq: The Logic of Withdrawal, an essential book 
for all antiwar activists, The Essential Chomsky, and the co-author, with Howard 
Zinn, of Voices of a People’s History of the United States, a companion volume 
to Zinn's classic book. He is also on the board of Haymarket Books.

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