Washington must decide now when and how its troops can withdraw from Iraq, writes Immanuel Wallerstein* The debate has shifted in the United States. It is no longer about the merits of the US invasion of Iraq. It is now about when and how the US can withdraw its troops from Iraq, what is called "exit strategy". US President George W Bush does continue to make speeches before ultra-friendly audiences saying that withdrawal now would embolden terrorists. But I think one should notice the "now" in his rhetoric. In any case, Bush's rhetoric is not going over very well. Even among his most ardent supporters, many are saying that the rhetoric is vacuous, and there is no concrete evidence offered of military or political progress for the US position in Iraq. Indeed, every day the situation seems worse, with even the US-backed Iraqi government's officials in Shia Basra arresting British soldiers, who have to be rescued by force. One has to pay attention when the quintessential establishment voice on foreign policy in the US, the review Foreign Affairs, runs an article in which the author is arguing that "the Bush doctrine has collapsed" and that consequently the government has no choice but to "embrace realism" and take a "pragmatic turn". And despite repeated statements by various people that the US troops may stay until 2009 or longer, Major General Douglas Lute, who is the director of operations of the US Central Command -- which oversees the occupation of Iraq -- has now stated on the record that the US will pull "significant numbers of troops out of Iraq in the next 12 months in spite of the continuing violence". I think the strongest sign of a change in mood in the US is that one of the candidates for the Republican Party's presidential nomination in 2008, Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, says the US is getting "more and more bogged down in Iraq", that the president should meet Cindy Sheehan, and that the White House is "disconnected from reality and losing the war". It does not matter whether Hagel is right. The important thing is that he's running for the Republican nomination, and he must think that there are Republican voters who will respond to the validity of his analysis. Hagel is in fact moving faster than the leading Democratic politicians, except for Senator Russell Feingold of Wisconsin, also a candidate for a presidential nomination, who has called officially for a withdrawal from Iraq by the end of 2006. Further to the left, there is a number of groups now calling for immediate withdrawal. Their march on Washington was a clear success, with between 100,000 and 200,000 participants -- not yet up to the anti-Vietnam War numbers, but then in this war, there are no middle-class draftees. Most of the soldiers are lower-class minorities and poor Whites. The latest polls show a three-way split in US public opinion: one-third for total and immediate withdrawal; one-third wanting to reduce the number of troops, but not yet ready for total withdrawal; and one-third to "stay the course", as President Bush phrases it, or to stay in Iraq "until the job is done," as Vice-President Cheney puts it. This seems to mean a very long time. Those more in the political centre want withdrawal by a fixed date. The Observer in London wrote recently that the British government is planning to withdraw substantial troops next spring. This was immediately denied by Tony Blair, but the Observer is not known for inventing stories. The people in the Cheney camp are really unbudgeable and will simply continue to press their views. It is the debate between those who call for reduction of troops and/or withdrawal by a fixed date and those who call for immediate and total withdrawal that is more interesting. In recent weeks, virtually every major newspaper in the US has been running editorials whose tenor is: The US probably made a mistake in invading Iraq. But it now has "responsibilities" not to leave precipitously, since that would result in a civil war. The so-called "moderates" (calling for withdrawal by a fixed date) argue that, even if the initial invasion was unjustified, the US responsibility to the Iraqis is to help the US- supported government maintain internal order, until it demonstrates it can do it by itself. This group brandishes the menace of total breakdown of national order in Iraq, civil war, and possible other outside invasions (by Iran, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia). The answer by those in favour of immediate withdrawal is quite simple. They argue that order has already broken down in Iraq, that the US continued presence is one of the principal causes of this breakdown, that every additional day spent there worsens the situation rather than improves it. And finally they argue that a fixed future date provides no magic since the likelihood that the situation will be substantially different on that date from today is minimal. The Bush regime has not only lost the war on the ground in Iraq. It is increasingly losing the support of the US public, in a way that Bush may find irreparable. * The writer is director of the Fernand Braudel Center at Binghamton University (SUNY), New York.
