Meet the Bloggers: Darcy Burner Can End the Iraq War Responsibly

When it comes to the Iraq war, the question is no longer whether the U.S. should end it, but how.  On yesterday's Meet the Bloggers, special guest Darcy Burner made the case for A Responsible Plan to End the War in Iraq, which she co-authored earlier this year.  This plan calls for the removal of U.S. troops rapidly and safely, while increasing diplomacy and foreign aid to rebuild Iraq. 

According the Burner, we're already beginning to see the Responsible Plan in action.  Any recent "success" in Iraq is NOT due to the military surge, despite what the Bush administration, John McCain, and the corporate media would have us believe.  Rather, the progress we've made in Iraq is due to new diplomatic, economic, and political efforts to foster stability.  What's more, the recent attempts by Congress to reform our interrogation policies, to hold private contractors in Iraq accountable, and to create the GI Bill for the 21st Century were all specifics initially recommended by the Responsible Plan, not to mention calls for a troop withdrawal timetable. 

But ending the Iraq war is only part of the Responsible Plan.  The show's panel of bloggers David Goldstein (HorsesAss.org), Joan McCarter (Daily Kos), and Matt Stoller (Open Left) pointed out that we must also repair the structural problems that led us into Iraq in the first place.  Failures across the board, from our branches of government to our media, must be fixed in order to prevent a quagmire like this from happening again.  Stoller suggested a crucial first step would be for the Bush administration to admit this war was all for oil, and that we cannot be intimidated by right-wing media, Big Oil executives, and conservatives who attempt to smear us for connecting Iraq with oil and our economy. 

Then there's the media.  As McCarter noted, the mainstream press STILL hasn't learned from its failures to confront the Bush administration in the run up to this war.  They're touting the success of the surge without looking at the non-military efforts to effect peaceful change.  

Yesterday's show coincided with a new report from NBC News that the U.S. and Iraq are close to creating a timetable for withdrawing our troops by 2010, with remaining forces out by 2012.  A timetable, of course, is what the Responsible Plan and Barack Obama have been calling for all along, and what Bush and McCain have resisted.  (David Goldstein jokingly referred to the differences between a "timetable" and a "time horizon.")  But as Stoller explained, the U.S. can't afford to leave troops in Iraq because that could mean forcing us to choose sides in an Iraqi civil war.  

While the show's bloggers disagreed as to how effective Obama might be in ending the war, all agreed that McCain has pandered too much on this issue to be the leader we need going forward.  What's more, they concluded that having Obama in office would enable Congress to the seek progressive reforms called for by the Responsible Plan.  Fortunately, Burner and others aren't waiting for November to take action.

For the full episode: http://meetthebloggers.org.  Meet the Bloggers airs live every Friday at 1pm ET/10am PT.  

Comments

[cunuck]

After reading the Plan, I was left with several disquieting thoughts, one of which is that the Iraq War is a symptom of something deeper that must be exposed before it can be solved.

There is another war that is going on - the one being waged against the American people at this very moment. This war is about the massive, historically unprecedented, transfer of wealth into the hands of a relative few that is occurring at an ever accelerating rate. And it is being spearheaded by the Bush Administration. The Iraq War could almost be termed a diversionary tactic in this war (and a profitable one at that).

Some of the recommendations in the Responsible Plan have a worrisome subtext. One could make the argument that these degradations of the Constitution are in anticipation for a possible backlash from the American people from within the country itself.

- loss of habeas corpus (secrecy allows for better control)
- privatizing military forces (helps to get around the Posse Comitatus Act)
- privatizing surveillance and information collection (removes government oversight)
- signing statements (concentrates power and decision making)

If you replace the "Outer Party" with the media and corporations, the parallels to Orwell's 1984 have become striking.

I believe the first order of business for there to be ANY solutions to America's problems, both domestic and foreign, is to "clean house" starting at the very top. But, I'm not sure if this will even work - the rot runs deep.

[cunuck]

The most important requirement for ending the Iraq War is to understand what the true reasons for it were. If these are not known then what is meant in achieving "victory" will never be known.

I don't agree with Stoller that oil was the sole motivator for the war although I believe it added significant weight to the tipping point in the rational for war.

The Iraq War happened because of the confluence of a number of factors:
- neoconservative control of the Bush Administration's defence and foreign policy branches (PNAC)
- a weak president with a narrow and uniformed world view (Bush)
- control of oil resources (peak oil)
- Iraq going off the petrodollar (petrodollar recycling and maintaining US$ as world reserve currency)
- industrial/military complex (the companies for which wars are good for the bottom line)
- American cultural and corporate hegemony (multinationals)
- Israeli security (Clean Break)

Who were the instigators for war in Iraq? What was their philosophy? What were their capabilities in achieving this goal?

One name comes up at the nexus of all these factors - Vice President Dick Cheney.

Most unjust wars have been started by a relatively small cadre of people with vested interests. Therefore, the only way to prevent them is oversight by vigilant and un-biased elected representatives combined with a vigorous and truly independent press. Unfortunately, both of these factors are sorely missing in America at this time.