Coleen Rowley's Editorial on the Occupation.

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Published August 10, 2005
Minneapolis/St. Paul Star Tribune

snip

Sadly, if the analogy to Vietnam holds true, as it has so far, it will be several more years (as many as 12, in Rumsfeld's most recent guess), until the Iraq war dead multiply to fill another Vietnam-like Wall. Actually, getting out of Iraq, no matter how it is marketed, could ironically mark the first real, not just rhetorical, change that must be made in the global struggle against violent extremism.

From the firsthand perspective of Minneapolis resident Sami Rasouli, director of the Muslim Peacemakers Team (who spent the last several months in his native country of Iraq and is now on his way back to help Christian and Muslim groups with peacemaking and rebuilding efforts), ending the American occupation is the only hope of quelling the ever-worsening factional infighting and insurgency. His opinion is seconded to a large extent by British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, who observed Aug. 2 that the presence of U.S. and British troops in Iraq is fueling the insurgency.

Ending American/British occupation of Iraq will also remove at least some ideological fuel of the violent extremism that has caused terrorist attacks elsewhere in the world. State Department figures have apparently shown the number of terrorist incidents soaring: from 2003's 20-year record of 175 incidents that killed 625 people -- to 651 such attacks that killed 1,907 in 2004.

Although a change in counting methodology may have accounted for some of the increase, it's impossible to now argue that we are winning the "war" on terrorism. Despite the reluctance of the British and American governments to accept the obvious, their own intelligence services attribute the growing violence to reaction to US/UK actions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

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1. Great post. Rowley will be a force in US politics.

And she makes an excellent point. Sometimes you have to just 'fold 'em' and walk away. This is one of those times. If we just looked at the present situation and forgot how it started, who started it (*) and so forth, today's logic would say, leave. It's time. Do it in an orderly way and be gone.