How to End the War in Iraq - In A Way That Will Actually Work

Now that the toothless resolution disapproving of the Bush escalation has passed without making any impact on the President, a growing number of Americans are beginning to realize that the war in Iraq is unlikely to end until Congress specifically cuts the funding for the war and refuses to pass any funding authorization for the Dept. of Defense until the troops are headed safely home. And that will not happen until Congressional representatives believe that they might be replaced in the 2008 primaries by candidates who make their vote funding the continuation of the war the central issue. You, yes I'm talking to YOU, could be that candidate. The 2008 elections will be one of the few times when you could run without having a lot of money. The overwhelming majority of Americans oppose the war, and could see through the phoniness of non-binding resolutions that your Congressperson may be supporting if your candidacy made that central when you run against your current Congressperson in the primaries or in the general election.

But there's a catch.

Such candidacies are unlikely to be successful until the American people can envision how they could get out of Iraq in a way that does not betray their own moral sensibilities. While Democrats like Congresspeople Lynn Woolsey, Dennis Kucinich and Maxine Waters have proposed exit strategies that are realistic and workable (HR 508), the country needs to know that disengaging from Iraq can be the beginning of a deeper ethical engagement with the entire world, not simply a retreat into immoral isolationism and cowardice that is hinted at when the Republicans denounce the anti-war movement as seeking to "cut and run." While no one can guarantee that the civil war that the Bush Administration managed to unleash will be solved by U.S. troops being removed, we can put forward a vision of how to provide for our own homeland security that might contribute to a decrease in hostility toward the U.S. and usher in a new paradigm for international relations.

For that reason, The Network of Spiritual Progressives, a new national organization of liberal religious people and "spiritual-but-not-religious" secularists who understand the importance of the spiritual dimension in human life, has launched an ad campaign urging a 3 step program:

1. The President or the Congress, speaking on behalf of the American people, must issue a statement of apology and public repentance for what the U.S. has done in Iraq, and send representatives to the U.N. to ask the world community for forgiveness.

2. The U.S. must ask the Arab League, the U.N. and other international groups to take the place of U.S. troops in temporarily holding back any potential escalation of ethnic violence. Up till now the U.S. has issued such an invitation only as part of a U.S. force seeking to stabilize Iraq under U.S. terms. If the U.S. were to ask for this help as part of its time-table for immediate withdrawal of troops, the Arab League and others have indicated that they would be willing to replace the U.S. forces and help the Iraqi people conduct a plebiscite on whether the country should remain one country of, as Muslims and Hindus did in the creation of modern India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, divide into more than one country along ethnic lines. In turn, the U.S. must surrender its bases to this international force, commit massive funding to rebuild Iraq, and require any remaining U.S. corporations to give at least a majority of its profits to the task of rebuilding.

3. The U.S. must immediately launch a Global Marshall Plan, dedicating 1-2% of the Gross Domestic Product of the U.S. each year for the next twenty to the task of ending global (and domestic) poverty, homelessness, hunger, inadequate health care, inadequate education, and repairing the damage done to the global environment. While the U.S. should seek to involve other G-8 countries in this plan, it must lead by example. Monies cannot be dumped on undemocratic or irresponsible governments. Careful planning on how to use the money both in stimulating public spending and private investment is part of the plan. Where government accountability cannot be firmly established, the monies should be invested through coalitions of NGOs in the recipient countries who can provide culturally and environmentally sensitive ways to improve the economies of their country. Simultaneously, the U.S. must redo its global trade arrangements so that they no longer work to privilege the advanced industrial countries while devastating the well being of the poorest and most powerless elements on the planet.

The Global Marshall Plan would immediately change the perception of the U.S. around the world and be a massive step toward world peace. Yet it would only receive public support if the peace movement begins to popularize two related spiritual ideas: First, that the well-being of the U.S. depends on the well-being of everyone else on the planet--there are no longer any "private solutions" for the U.S. that ignore the fate of everyone else. Second, that the most effective path to homeland security is not through domination of others, but through genuine caring, generosity, and open-heartedness toward others. It is this shift in paradigm that is the center of what the NSP calls its Generosity Strategy for Homeland Security.

Of course, the voices of cynicism will immediately ridicule any vision that imagines that others around the world (in Iraq, Iran, China, Syria, Palestine, Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea, etc.) could possibly be moved by a humanitarian campaign that embodied a spiritual and ethical commitment to the well-being of others. And the truth is that other countries will have good reason to doubt our sincerity, given the U.S. role in the world in the past 50 years. Our actions will have to change our image--and that can only happen if we are willing not only to give money and our time and energy to rebuilding the economy of the world, but will also do it in a way that embodies the spirit of generosity. If Americans give grudgingly as a way of buying life-insurance for America, the program won't work. But if Americans can get to the consciousness needed in which we really understand that our well-being depends on the well-being of every other person on the planet, and then can see ourselves as fundamentally one with the rest of humanity, we may be able to give in a spirit of kindness and genuine caring for the other people on the planet, and that spirit itself is the indispensable part of achieving security for ourselves and our country. Paradoxically, to protect ourselves, we have to stop worrying about only ourselves.

And this way of thinking is the only way we can protect ourselves and our country from the inevitable right-wing backlash that happens when the U.S. does end the war and there is an escalation of violence in Iraq. The fascists came to power in Germany in the 1930s by charging that the Left had "stabbed in the back" the fighting forces of Germany by undermining the war effort in the First World War, and our own domestic would-be-fascists tried that after the Vietnam war was lost. This time they might succeed unless there is a powerful counter-force that can provide a different vision of the world and a picture of how we might achieve safety and security through generosity when the strategy of domination has failed. So even if the Democrats were to win in 2008, unless the Democratic Administration has this new paradigm to teach to the country, and the courage and backbone to insist on this new world view, the country could soon fall back under the sway of right-wing elements that are born-again Cheneys (to imagine a nightmare for the next decade). So the central criterion for who should be the candidate of the Democrats should be: who can provide and has the courage to articulate an alternative worldview that could help people understand the validity of the strategy of generosity and the historical failure over and over again of the strategy of domination.

This is the kind of consciousness being fostered by the Network of Spiritual Progressives. So we are launching a campaign for this strategy to end the war, and to encourage people to run for office in whatever political party they choose in order to advance these ideas. Our first step: we are placing ads in media around the country with this strategy. We need you to sign the ad and help us fund it. You can read the ad and sign/donate to it at www.tikkun.org/iraqpeace.

Our next step: Generosity Sunday, April 15. We are asking people to use Tax Day this year to focus on teach-ins at local churches, synagogues, mosques, ashrams, community centers, labor unions, college and universities, or just our local park. The goal: to popularize the notion of a Global Marshall Plan and other ideas (including the Millennium Goals and the One Campaign) to end the war while increasing our commitment to the well being of others. If you want to be involved, please contact [e-mail] or go to www.spiritualprogressives.org, read our Core Vision, and then our description of Generosity Sunday. Join or help start a chapter of the Network of Spiritual Progressives. And lets work together to really end this war.