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Iraq: The Logic of Withdrawal

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This outstanding book makes the case for the immediate withdrawal of all foreign troops from Iraq. This would meet the democratic demands of the Iraqi people, and also of the American and British peoples. In a September 2005 New York Times-CBS News poll, 52% supported the immediate withdrawal of US troops.

Arnove sums up, "Every single argument the Bush administration made to justify the invasion of Iraq has turned out to be false. Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction, posed no imminent threat to the United States, and had no connection to al-Qaeda or to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Iraq was attacked not because it had weapons of mass destruction, but because it did not (a fact that has not been lost on other potential targets of U. S. intervention). U. S. soldiers were not greeted as liberators, and the occupation has not paid for itself, or required few troops, or been quickly concluded. Nor has the occupation made the world safer or reduced the threat of weapons of mass destruction. Indeed, it has made Iraq, the Middle East, and the world far more dangerous."

From the start, the war on Iraq was a huge lie. As Arnove writes, "The attacks of September 11, 2001, provided the pretext the Bush administration needed to portray an offensive war to reshape the Middle East as a defensive measure to protect the people of the United States."

Everything we are told about the war is untrue. For example, we are told that the occupation troops conduct a humanitarian war on the ground. In reality, the USA is waging war largely by massive, unreported, bombing: the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing alone dropped more than 500,000 tons of bombs on Iraq between May 2003 and December 2005. We are told that there is no national resistance attacking the foreign occupier, just terrorists attacking civilians. In reality, for every attack against civilians, there are a hundred against the occupying forces.

British governments have always lied to us about matters of war and peace, of security and the national interest. This Labour government is different only because its lies have been more stupid, so that we have rumbled it more quickly.

Q: How many pages does it take to make a compelling case for immediate withdrawal from Iraq? A: Apparently not many when you have logic on your side!

It is a myth that Bush & Co.--though misguided--had the best of intentions at heart when they ordered the military invasion of Iraq in March of 2003. And this unfortunate myth prostrates the antiwar movement when it deludes itself into believing that a bloody occupation stemming from an illegal war can somehow be salvaged into something beneficial for anybody besides Halliburton.

Anthony Arnove's book explains the real roots of the Iraq war in the context of power and profit (not misguided humanitarianism), summarizes for the reader three years of blood-spattered occupation history, provides eight excellent reasons for immediate withdrawal and then discusses the ABC's of anti-imperialist struggle drawn from the history of the Vietnam War.

This isn't a catchall antiwar book to give to your chicken hawk uncle at the next family reunion. This is a book for the 50 million Americans who already consider themselves part of the antiwar movement and want some real answers about stopping the blood-letting. Or as the author puts it, "...the U.S. left in particular needs far greater clarity about the reasons for the war, the political context of the war, and an effective strategy for ending it." (page 98)

This is the most articulate, politically sophisticated yet easy-to-read appeal to bring our loved ones home now that I've read since the war began.

But don't trust this synopsis--read the book.

"We find ourselves in a remarkable situation today," argues Anthony Arnove in _Iraq: The Logic of Withdrawal._

"Despite a massive propaganda campaign in support of the occupation of Iraq, a clear majority of people in the United States now believes the invasion was not worth the consequences and should never have been undertaken...
Yet many people who opposed this unjust invasion, who opposed the 1991 Gulf War and the sanctions on Iraq for years before that, some of whom joined mass demonstrations against the war before it began, have been persuaded that the U.S. military should now remain in Iraq for the benefit of the Iraqi people. We confront the strange situation today of many people mobilizing against an unjust war but then reluctantly supporting the military occupation that flows directly from it." (65-66)

Arnove's very readable book is aimed at resolving this paradox by providing a clear case for the immediate withdrawal of all foreign troops from Iraq. He poses the question -- in contrast to widespread fears of what might happen if the U.S. leaves Iraq -- of what happen if it stays.

The first five chapters lay the groundwork for the book's main argument in favor of immediate withdrawal. The first two chapters compare the claims made by politicians and pundits to the reality of the war's deadly consequences. These chapters comprise an exhaustive compendium of the most damning facts, quotes and stories about how the war was sold and the devastation it has wrought. By exposing the occupation from every angle -- from the unwillingness of the mainstream media to question the lies coming from the mouths of the government; to the corporate profiteering and sheer corruption of the neoliberal regime being imposed upon Iraq; to, most of all, the inhumanity and brutality of the U.S. as an occupying power -- they are an invaluable resource for activists.

The next three chapters place this occupation in its historical context, showing how it fits into a history of U.S. colonialism on the one hand, and a history of Iraqi occupation -- and resistance -- on the other. Because of how little this history is discussed in U.S. society, much of it will be new to many committed antiwar activists.

Having thus set the stage, Arnove attempts to lay out a solution in the last two chapters of his book. Chapter six puts forward eight arguments for immediate withdrawal from Iraq. Most of these arguments are framed as direct refutations of the common arguments to stay-for example, "The United States is not preventing civil war in Iraq," or "The United States is not honoring those who died by continuing the conflict." Taken together, they are utterly compelling.

Finally, chapter seven raises the question of how this vision can become a reality. It considers the factors that forced the U.S. to abandon its war in Vietnam and argues that all are beginning to be in play today, though they are not yet sufficient to outweigh the importance of occupying Iraq to a U.S. political elite determined to expand its imperial ambitions throughout the world. The heart of this chapter is its examination of the movements to end the occupation -- among students, soldiers and their families, unions, and Iraqis themselves -- and its analysis of what it will take for these movements to once again develop the power to defeat the mightiest superpower in world history.

As an antiwar activist, I feel that I've been waiting a long time for a book like this, and yet it could hardly be more timely. _Iraq: The Logic of Withdrawal_ is a crucial contribution toward clarifying why immediate withdrawal can be the only solution in Iraq -- and why an antiwar movement that takes this as its central demand is the only hope of achieving it.

This should be mandatory reading for anyone who has bought into the lie filled Bush regime change rhetoric regarding Iraq. A Neocon filled US administration which has been proven wrong in virtually every single one its Iraq pre-war and current engagement contentions.

From "Mission Accomplished", to "Bring It On", to "...the insurgency is in its last throes..." to lies about active WMD programs, lies about Yellow Cake material from Niger, lies about Saddams mythical connections to Al Qaida and 911, this book helps unearth many of the utterly false, and utterly illogical claims told by the current Bush Administration in D.C. regarding their oil based, "Project for the New American Century" military actions in Iraq.

Another reviewer above stated the following, "Suppose the US pulls out and Mr. Arnove is proven wrong. A civil war breaks out."

Hello, a civil war had already broken out in Iraq in case you missed the last 3 years of activity over there!!! That's what the insurgency is, it is a Civil War action! A civil war initiated solely, 100% by the Bush Neocon doctrine in Iraq beginning in April 2003. As far as the war spreading further in the Middle East, there was no war in Iraq prior to the US military illegally attacking that country in 2003. Again, there was no war there! And there is nothing to indicate that our continued military presence in Iraq is reducing the insurgency after 3+ years of occupation. In fact, all logical signs are that it is merely fueling futher insurgency recruits and fueling further deaths in that civil war.

And what happens if the Iraq Shiite cleric Al Sadr, an extremely anti-US fundamentalist, is eventually elected the majority leader of Iraq, which could easily happen given that he's in the majority Shiite sect. Do we then remove him from power because Iraq elected him in a "democratic" fashion, but we now disagree with whom they elected?

The attempt at analogy between US highway deaths versus military deaths is comparable to believing that "Fox News" is "fair and balanced" reporting. If you believe that you probably also believe that there is no civil war yet being waged in Iraq too, LOL.

Very good read, and if you want further information on the real motives behind the Bush Administrations Iraq regime change, do a google search on "The Project For a New American Century" and read up on the true motives behind this illegal war of Don Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz and other Neocons whom Bush has surrounded himself with.

Coherent. That's the one word review of Anthony Arnove's latest book, Iraq:The Logic of Withdrawal. Incoherent. That's what Washington's policy in Iraq seems to be. What makes Arnove's book so important is that he dissects that policy and proves that the war in Iraq is not an incoherent bumble that's gone awry. In fact, as Arnove makes abundantly clear, it's US foreign policy as it's always been. This remains the case even in the light of Condoleeza Rice's admission of thousands of tactical errors. After all, Ms. Rice didn't admit that the war itself was an error, only the manne in which it is fought.
As the war drags interminably on and people continue to die, the antiwar movement in the US is still fumbling around questions of timetables and demands. One element of the movement has hitched itself to the progressive wing of the Democratic party--a connection that has stifled that element's ability to make the only reasonable demand an antiwar movement can make: Get out of Iraq now and bring the occupying troops home. The rest of us in the movement continue to make this demand, but seem to go unheard. Part of the reason for this lies in the fact that our allies do have those connections in the public mind to the Democrats, but the greater reason is our inability to mobilize the broader mass of the US public--a public that opinion polls tell us is overwhelmingly opposed to the continuation of the war.
Like the similarly titled book written in 1966 about the US war in Vietnam by Arnove's inspiration and collaborator Howard Zinn, Iraq:The Logic of Withdrawal, is not a shrill exercise in rhetoric. It isn't full of make love not war sentiment or calls to hit the barricades with your black bandannas and gas masks. It is exactly what it says it is: a logical, point-by-point argument to the world as to why we need to insist that US troops leave Iraq immediately. There is passion in these pages, but it is the passion of pure logic in the defense of humanity and the earth we live on. Well-researched and well-spoken, the reasonableness of Arnove's presentation does more than expose the madness of the men and women who are running this war, it peels away the madness of the system that those men and women work for.
It is this element of the book that goes beyond a mere call to end this war. One of the debates within the movement, especially among the liberals and some leftists, is how much of the conversation should be about empire. Arnove argues that because of the economic and geopolitical reasons behind the US invasion and occupation of Iraq, the occupation can only truly end when the antiwar movement understands that it must be an anti-imperialist movement. Like Mark Twain and his circle of anti-imperialist activists back in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Arnove wants the reader to understand that it is the needs of the financial system we live in that demands that our men and women go off to kill and die. He does this patiently and clearly, without a hint of self-righteousness.

Mr. Arnove discusses the reasons for the war, which are nothing less than the whiles of empire. He makes it clear that leaving is the only ethical choice. Excellent coherent arguments.

Bush's war of aggression was pre-mediated from the start .Arnove points out that prior to 9-11, Rice, Powell and Cheney made statements on TV to the effect that Saddam was not a threat, that his military capability was contained in a severely weakened state. However after 9-11, that event was exploited to realize the longstanding Neoconservative dream of taking over Iraq, installing a client regime and using it to further American control of the distribution of oil to its allies/rivals in Asia and Europe. U.S. bombing sorties in the no-fly zones went from 0 in early 2002 to 56 per month from May-September 2002 and dramatically accelerated after September 2002. Such was the groundwork being laid to soften up Iraq's military and infrastructure so our military could heroically defeat Saddam's severely weakened forces.. The September 2002 upsurge, of course, coincided with the launch of the administration's campaign to portray Iraq to the American public as a mortal threat to American survival. Such Al Qaeda detainees from Afghanistan as Ibn Al Shayk Al Libi were used to advance the claim that Saddam's people were training Al Qaeda in biological and chemical weapons use. Arnove writes that according to the NYT, a declassified DIA document shows that early in 2002 the administration was aware that Al Shayk was a liar, was merely telling his captors what they wanted to here.

. I did not know until I read it in this book, that Bush, speaking before the Filipino parliament in late 2003, compared his war on Iraq to the American conquest of the Philippines. In that instance America rescued a subject people from colonialism, Bush explained. Apparently, Bush's speechwriters had not explained to him, that the Philippines was to change from a Spanish into an American colony for fifty years afterwards, to say nothing of being a neocolonial subject of the U.S. after its independence. The American war to subjugate the Philippines was absolutely hideous: whole villages burned, hundreds of thousands murdered or dying of disease and malnutrition, American troops in genocidal frenzies as the Red Cross reported at the time.. It was so hideous that even some very conservative individuals and people like Mark Twain, felt compelled to form an anti-imperialist league. Then there was, with Teddy Roosevelt's exultations, the massacre of 900 Moro civilians in 1906.

The U.S. air war on Iraq in 1991 completely destroyed Iraqi civilian infrastructure such as its electricity, water treatment and sanitation facilities. Then the U.S. blocked repair of such things during the pre-2003 sanctions/bombing era. As of late 2005, Arnove quotes a USA Today Article, 81 planned projects for rebuilding water and sanitation facilities had been reduced by the Iraqi government to 13. Half of Iraq still did not have electricity and only 8 percent of the country outside Baghdad was connected to sewage networks. Only nine billion of the over 18 billion promised in Iraqi reconstruction money has been disbursed--given to companies like Bechtel. The latter signed a contract to rebuild the water supply systems in all urban centers, but never reached that goal. At least 100 million dollars of reconstruction money has gone missing. Iraqis often die because the electricity in their hospital goes on blackout when they are in critical condition. Iraq has been put on IMF style "shock therapy"--conditions which even a New York Times business writer found cruel.

The term "Hajis" as applied to Iraqis by U.S. troops is very similar to the earlier "gook" applied to Vietnamese. The level of violence in Iraqi has certainly been encouraged by the conduct of more than a few of our soldiers. Arnove quotes a Red Cross report from February 2004 which stated that U.S. soldiers were on a widespread basis indiscriminately arresting people, often all the people in the houses of suspects and holding them in very brutal conditions. Arnove quotes a story from Dexter Filkins of the New York Times which described soldiers warning some women that they had fifteen minutes to remove all the items from their house--some relative accused by the U.S. military of hijacking trucks apparently was reported to have lived there. The house was blow up. Lieutenant General Taguba's report of early 2004 likewise reported widespread torture and savagery by U.S. troops in detention centers. Arnove quotes a New York Times article by Eric Schmitt in September 2005 describing how soldiers of the 82nd Airborne Division regularly beat up Iraqi detainees to relieve stress and tortured them. He quotes an article describing the anger of Iraqis having their houses confiscated for military purposes by U.S. troops. He quotes the New York Times reporting rather blithely in November 2004 that in the second murderous assault on Fallujah U.S. forces invaded Fallujah General Hospital and made all doctors and patients lie down in handcuffs. This blatant violation of the Geneva Convention was enacted, it was explained, because the hospital, was giving out what the military claimed were exaggerated figures on civilian casualties. Also the military prevented civilians from leaving Fallujah.

This book, whatever its lack of depth in many instances, goes way beyond the tactical criticisms of the war found emanating from the Democrats. It condemns the whole Democratic-Republican corporate backed oligarchy and the assumptions supporting U.S. imperialism which the two parties share. It reminds us that history is still relevant--it reminds us about how the British set up the "Arab façade" to control Middle Eastern oil after World War One and how Iraq resisted the British, which moved one British officer to suggest Iraqis should be exterminated--and Winston Churchill and other British planners to demand the use of poison gas against "uncivilized tribes."

Arnove's book lays out, in a pretty straight-forward manner (105 pages, not counting the foreword, afterword, appendix, acknowledgement, and notes) the case for pulling all U.S. troops out of Iraq immediately. I read a few other books about Iraq before reading this one, and I would suggest that to any reader, just so they have a frame of reference while reading it. Arnove tries to use well-known quotes and facts to support his argument, and this helps, but there is still so much information on such a complex issue, that I think it would be difficult to read this and fully comprehend it with no prior knowledge of Iraq.

Arnove makes a very compelling case. What's sad is that he's using readily available information to make it, and yet we're now sending more troops to Iraq.

I think the only fault of the book is expecting that it will drive people to action. Arnove isn't really presenting anything new, just laying all the facts out for us in a very clean, logical way, almost like he's writing his thesis. While this style might work if Arnove were a lawyer convicting Bush of war crimes, it just serves to further highlight how this administration works above the law and gets away with it. Even with this much clear evidence against the war it continues on.

Anthony presents a sober account of how calculated the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq was. Exposing all the rationales for the war as lies, "Iraq: The Logic of Withdrawal" turns to the real reasons for the bi-partisan project in Iraq; to further imperial aims in the middle east. In the The Logic of Withdrawal chapter Anthony systematically nullifies all arguments against withdrawal, and the following chapter argues for the only principled stance -- troops out now!

The book is only 105 pages long, but it explains the US/British foreign policies that wanted the war, how the evidence necessary to invade was manufactured, and also the misreporting of the war by the media. It's extremely concise and valueable. The author even manages to squeeze in some semi-tangents that are important. My favorite one is the discussion of the Democratic Party and their belligerence - I just get tired of hearing that the Democratic Party is an anti-war party.

A third of the book is devoted to explaining why the invasion was sought after (as well as the occupation of Afghanistan). Then the book moves to focus on the realities of the war's fighting, and how it is covered. After the end of all "major combat operations" in May 2003 the continued attacks on US troops was blamed on Hussein, who was captured in December 2003. After the fighting continued, it was blamed on foreign interference. The administration said a provisional Iraqi government was needed. After the "free" elections on January 2005 the fighting continued. Since then, the administration has been blaming it on al-Qaeda and other foreigners, which Arnove shows not to be the case. These steps of blaming a domestic resistance to other causes is strikingly similar to that of Vietnam. After facing continued resistance, our policies changed to describe and fight those false causes (strategic-hamlet program-->search-and-destroy operations-->pacification program-->Operation Phoenix-->Vietnamization (which was only initiated after the Tet Offensive of 1968 awakened people to the grim truth of the war). Also discussed in this portion of the book (what's really going on over there) is the liberalization of Iraq's economy - It's straight from the IMF/World Bank playbook. The last section of the book argues, after looking at why the invasion occured and what's happening there now, that we should leave Iraq and provide aid until they're back on their feet.

I'd also recommend that an interested reader look into Bush in Babylon: The Recolinisation of Iraq and America's confrontation with revolutionary change in the Middle East, 1948-83.