Frank Pauc: Immigration debate should be about humanity, not legality

The recent draconian law passed in Arizona has given me reason to write about the immigration issue. Immigration is something that I care about passionately (my wife, Karin, is a German citizen with a green card), and when I care about something, I write.

The immigration debate seems to revolve around whether the newcomers to our country are here lawfully or not. Passions run high regarding the legality of their presence among us. I think that we should be looking at the morality of the issue rather than strictly at the legal aspect of it. After all, man-made laws and morality are not necessarily the same things.

Instead of looking at recent immigrants as being legal or not, we should start out by recognizing the fact that every immigrant to the U.S. is a human being, worthy of respect and possessing an innate dignity. To those of us who are religious, we would say that every immigrant is a Child of God, created in His likeness and image. If we accept that this is true about newcomers to our country, then a certain behavior is demanded of us. It is made quite clear in the scriptures used by both Jews and Christians that you may not mistreat the alien in your midst. We are required to treat the strangers in our country with compassion and respect.

We have all been strangers. Certainly, unless we are Native Americans, all of our ancestors were strangers in this country at one time. I would argue that few of our ancestors came to this country on a whim. Most of them came because of necessity. Nobody leaves a comfortable home to live among people that speak a different language and have different customs. A person leaves the land of his birth because he or she believes that they must do so. Some of the reasons for leaving aren't always particularly noble or even legal. One of my great-grandfathers was an Austrian draft dodger and he came here just prior to the First World War. Our most recent immigrants to the U.S. are no different than our own forefathers; they have come because of a burning need.

My people came here about one hundred years ago from Austria-Hungary. They came at a time when the doors of this nation were wide open, and all that was required to enter this country was a strong back and the willingness to do difficult work for low wages. Those who come here now also have strong backs and are willing to work at the worst types of jobs. So, what has changed? We changed the rules; we changed our laws. Few of our ancestors would have been allowed into this country under the present rules. Are those who enter our country now illegally really criminals, or are our laws unjust? Do we treat the new immigrants fairly? Is the present debate really about our security or is it really about xenophobia?

How many people in this country have ever lived in a foreign country? How many have had to learn a foreign language to get along? I have. Back in the '80s I lived in Germany, courtesy of the U.S. Army. I lived in an apartment with a German landlord. I shopped at German stores. I had a safety net with regards to income; the Army was paying my way. Even though I didn't have struggle to find a job in Germany, I still had to learn the language and the customs of the host nation. It was hard. I remember clearly the times when I felt confused, or utterly alone. However, my wife Karin's family accepted me with open arms. They didn't shun me or mock me for not being able to speak German well. They treated me like a friend, and eventually as part of their family. That experience changed my life. Karin's family didn't have to accept me, but they did anyway. I am forever grateful to them for that.

The U.S. does not have of sterling record with regards to welcoming the immigrant. Although we are almost all the descendants of immigrants, we often treat the newcomer with suspicion and disdain. It doesn't have to be this way. It should not be this way. We do not honor our fore-bearers by mistreating the immigrant. We honor our ancestors when we greet our new neighbor with an open hand and an open heart.

Frank Pauc is a member of Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice.

Steve Burns: Ten lessons from a U.S. defeat

Remember Iraq? "No blood for oil"? "Bush lied, people died"? Takes you back, doesn't it? These days, even for that small percentage of Americans who still pay attention to any of our wars, Iraq seems like last year's news. At a recent anti-war teach-in at the University of Wisconsin that I attended, only workshops on Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran were featured, and there was little discussion of Iraq, which now seems to have inherited the title of "forgotten war" from its older (by thirteen months) brother. Not to fault the teach-in organizers, of course. After all, Afghanistan is the war we're escalating, and Iraq is the war we're drawing down. But it's precisely because of that drawdown that Iraq deserves our attention. It's a shame that, at the precise moment when the Iraqi people are having some success at forcing their U.S. occupiers from their soil, the attention of the U.S. peace movement is elsewhere, because there's much we can learn from Iraq about how to end an occupation and defeat an empire. And "defeat" is exactly the word to apply to the U.S. imperial project in Iraq.

Consider the goals that U.S. leaders had in mind (not always shared with the public) when our troops marched into Baghdad in April of 2003. Iraq would be a strong U.S. ally, a base from which hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops could threaten other countries in the region. Iraq would provide a neoliberal, "free-market" model to bring disaster capitalism to the very heart of the last bastion of state-owned enterprise, the oil-producing Middle East. Iraq, which, we were reminded, "floats on a sea of oil," would open itself to "Production Sharing Agreements" that would pay its people pennies on the dollar while locking up Iraqi oil in the hands of U.S. oil companies - and out of the hands of our economic competitors.

Has even a single one of these goals been achieved? State-owned enterprises that were supposed to be sold off to foreign investors found no takers, after militant workers took action, some even threatening to blow up their own factories if the sales went through. And the crown jewel of Iraqi state-owned "socialist" enterprise, the oil industry, remains in state hands, watched over by a powerful Iraqi oil workers union. The hoped-for U.S. monopoly on oil contracts also turned out to be a fantasy, as Iraq signed new contracts with state-owned oil companies in China.

And what of those permanent U.S. bases? U.S. commanders now find themselves working under a ticking timetable requiring a complete withdrawal of U.S. forces by the end of 2011. Their hopes that the Iraqi government would agree to a renegotiation of the withdrawal deadline are now more illusory than ever, given the strong showing of anti-occupation Cleric Muqtada al Sadr in the recent Iraqi elections. If they want to stay in Iraq, their only option may be to repudiate the withdrawal agreement, a move that would cause an explosion of Iraqi armed resistance at exactly the time when the bulk of U.S. forces are needed to control Afghanistan.

No, our leaders won't learn a thing from their defeat in Iraq. But what can we learn? Here are some lessons I've drawn, please feel free to add your own in comments below:

1) Occupations are primarily ended through the resistance of those under occupation
The agreement that's on its way to forcing a U.S. withdrawal was not drafted by the U.S. Congress (which has proved itself a better war-funder than war-ender) but by the Iraqi Parliament. Although U.S. media tended to focus almost exclusively on the armed Iraqi insurgency, Iraqi resistance to occupation has had a powerful political expression in the form of a strong anti-occupation block elected to the Iraqi parliament. Negotiations on the withdrawal agreement took most of 2009 to complete, and in the end Iraqi negotiators rejected all of the Bush administration's demands, including U.S. control over Iraqi airspace for an indefinite period, the right to attack other countries from Iraq without Iraqi consent, and immunity from prosecution for U.S. mercenaries. What was left was a requirement for a withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraqi cities by June 2009 and a complete withdrawal of all U.S. forces by December 31, 2011.

2) Loss of international support is critical
One of the factors forcing the Bush administration to the negotiating table was the expiration of a U.N. mandate that the U.S. had operated under since its invasion in 2003. The Bush administration's clear preference was to simply extend the mandate, year by year, continuing to rule over Iraqis without their consent. For a time, key members of the U.N. Security Council were willing to go along with this scheme, but eventually international support ran out, and the U.S. had no choice but to engage in the direct negotiations with the Iraqi government which led to the withdrawal agreement.

3) Domestic resistance tips the balance
When I write above that "Occupations are primarily ended through the resistance of those under occupation," I don't mean to say that we should sit back and "Let the Iraqis and Afghans do it." While Iraqi and Afghan resistance will be primarily responsible for ending these occupations (and any sense of fairness and solidarity requires us to say this) domestic resistance limits the damage done by the forces of empire on their way to defeat, elects representatives who can acknowledge defeat when they see it, and limits public support for the military project, reducing the number of lives lost and the billions squandered in the process, and finally tipping the balance towards a U.S. exit. Lessons 4-10 below are about what we can do.

4) Unpopular wars kill fewer people
While no one can claim that the destruction caused by the U.S. in Iraq and Afghanistan is "limited", we should remember that destruction in war is always relative. If we want to measure the effect of unpopularity on a war's destructiveness, we should take as our basis of comparison the last U.S. war that enjoyed broad popular support, WWII. U.S. commanders in that war firebombed major cities, causing hundreds of thousands of deaths in a single air raid, finally escalating their use of force to include the use of nuclear weapons (twice.) Meanwhile, commanders in "The Good War" threw hundreds of thousands of American soldiers onto foreign beach heads, losing more men in a single day than we've lost in Iraq and Afghanistan in nine years. During WWII, our military and political leaders never doubted that they enjoyed a complete free hand to employ whatever level of violence they thought necessary to win the war, because they never doubted that their actions enjoyed the broad support of the American people. There is simply no limit to the amount of violence that our leaders are willing to inflict or the number of (our) deaths they are willing to tolerate if they think that a war is popular. By making the Iraq and Afghanistan wars unpopular, the U.S. peace movement has helped to save the lives of Iraqis, Afghans, and Americans. Because of the unpopularity of the U.S. war in Afghanistan, we found ourselves last year in a national debate about sending 30,000 additional troops into Afghanistan, rather than a debate about whether to send 300,000 troops into a full-on invasion of Pakistan or Iran.

5) Peace movements are very good at making wars unpopular
With a strong boost from events in Iraq, the U.S. peace movement succeeded in making the Iraq war the most unpopular war in our nation's history. At its peak, opposition to the war reached nearly 70%, a number that is even more remarkable when you consider that, in the seven years of the Iraq war, war opponents and advocates for withdrawal never received even five minutes to make their case on a Sunday-morning political chat show or on cable news. We should all draw a great deal of encouragement from this, because it means that a large majority of Americans are capable of thinking for themselves and adopting a heretical idea which has not been implanted in their brains by corporate-government propaganda. In an environment of widespread distrust of the media and government, word of mouth turns out to be the most powerful tool imaginable for moving public opinion, and it's that word-of-mouth communication, the conversations at the street-corner peace vigil, the town hall meetings at the public library, and the conversation at a kitchen table or the local diner, that we excel at.

6) Get to 70%, and you'll see consequences
Making a war unpopular helps, but nothing magical happens in D.C. when opposition to war crosses the 50% mark. Approach 70%, though (a reasonable estimate of the non-insane portion of the U.S. population) and you'll start to see things happen. It was because of the near-70% opposition to the Iraq war that the peace movement created that a Presidential candidate who spoke against the Iraq war and promised to withdraw from Iraq won the 2008 election, and a candidate who thought invading Iraq was a great idea and wanted to stay there forever didn't win the election. Yes, all that President Obama has promised to do is abide by an agreement forced on him by the Iraqis, but nevertheless, it's a small and useful gift from the U.S. peace movement to the Iraqi people that we now have a President who is better able to read the clear "Yankee Go Home!" written on every wall in Iraq.

7) We've done it before, and we can do it again
At this point, you may be saying, "But what about Afghanistan? Even if I buy your claim that Obama really is going to withdraw all U.S. forces from Iraq, what about the 30,000 additional troops - not to mention the contractors - that he's sending into Afghanistan?" And yes, it's true that President Obama is escalating the war in Afghanistan, but let's remember that the U.S. peace movement didn't spend the last seven years vigorously making the case against the war in Afghanistan. For six of the past seven years, our focus was almost exclusively on Iraq, partly because it was the easier war to argue against. That early focus on Iraq had some positive results, as I've outlined above, but it's also meant that we haven't yet moved public opinion to strongly oppose the Afghanistan occupation. To continue a war, those in power don't need public support, merely public confusion. And the public, when it thinks about Afghanistan at all, is plenty confused. The good news is this: We know that our grassroots, word-of-mouth efforts do work in moving public opinion, and we now know that 70% domestic opposition, combined with strong resistance by those under occupation, will produce results.

8) Even the most powerful people in the world can't do the impossible
Clearly, we live in a world of vast inequalities of wealth and power. If those who have the wealth and power embark on policies that are practical, sensible and sustainable, there's simply no way we can defeat them. But it's often the case that those in power try to enact policies that are impractical, unsustainable, and even impossible ("Hey, everyone! Let's use the U.S. military to completely remake the Middle East along the lines of some plan cooked up in a Washington, D.C. think-tank!") When the powerful attempt the impossible we can defeat them, because the main struggle then isn't really between "us" and "them", but between "them" and reality, and reality always wins. Our role, then, is not to overcome the powerful through the direct application of our own power (which is inadequate to the task) but to throw our weight on the balance, so that reality wins sooner, rather than later. A dying empire can kill a lot of people as it goes down to defeat, and our resistance is essential to limiting the damage.

9) A little humility is in order
You may think that humility is the last thing that the peace movement, which is currently at a low ebb, needs. But looking back on how the Iraq occupation is ending should cause us rethink our rhetoric and how we represent our role in the war-ending business. To often, we have implied that burden of ending the war falls primarily on our shoulders, as we promote the big march or the bill in Congress that's going to "end the war". Not only is this approach disrespectful of the people in Iraq and Afghanistan who bear the brunt of the occupation - and will be primarily responsible for ending it - it sends U.S. peace activists off in a pointless and frustrating search for the "magic bullet" that will "end the war." Powerful forces are at work (the most powerful being the resistance of the Iraqi and Afghan people themselves) and we are just one factor among many that will lead to the end of the Iraq/Afghanistan occupations, and eventually to the end of the U.S. empire itself. Promoting a more realistic understanding of how our resistance fits into the global movement against empire might appeal to the growing number of people who are turned off by unrealistic "Yes we can!" cheerleading.

10) Our greatest impact will be here at home
While the Iraqi and Afghan people are busy ending our occupations of their countries (with a small assist from us), there's much a domestic peace movement could be doing here at home to make the U.S. less of a danger to the rest of the world. Most importantly, the work of changing our own country is work that only we can do. One of the bright spots in a struggling peace movement is a diverse and growing counter-recruitment movement, which places its focus on the school down the street. While those of us who care about the planet attempt to reduce our "food-miles", why don't we also try to reduce our "activism-miles"? How about some state-level activism rather than Washington-based activism? In Maryland, a coalition of teachers, parents and students succeeded in winning legislation to limit the ability of military recruiters to use the ASVAB test as a source of "leads" for recruitment. Not local enough for you? How about Binghamton, New York, where the Mayor is in the process of installing a donated "cost of war" clock at City Hall? No, these local actions won't "end the war", but long-term changes in public attitudes may be the greatest threat that we pose to the empire. We know this because no less an authority than Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has told us so. In a New York Times story bearing the Orwellian headline "Gates Calls European Mood a Danger to Peace," U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates was quoted as saying, “The demilitarization of Europe — where large swaths of the general public and political class are averse to military force and the risks that go with it — has gone from a blessing in the 20th century to an impediment to achieving real security and lasting peace in the 21st." Please note that Gates' concern was not about a bill pending in the European parliament, nor with a big march planned in a major European city, but with something much more insidious and hard to eradicate - the way that "ordinary" people, people like you and me, view the question of war and peace. If the seven years of the Iraq occupation have taught us anything, it should be that the battle for the hearts and minds of Americans is a struggle the peace movement can win.

Steve Burns is Program Director of Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice.

The better part of valor -- facing reality

The next time someone tells you that we must continue to wage war in Iraq or Afghanistan or in some other foreign adventure, to make certain that those who have died there did not die in vain, remember the words of Gen. Stanley McChrystal, commander of forces in Afghanistan.

Discussing the US abandonment of a military outpost in an area known as Death Valley, where 42 American troops -- and many more Afghan soldiers -- were killed and hundreds wounded, McChrystal said:

“I care deeply about everybody who has been hurt here, but I can’t do anything about it. I can do something about people who might be hurt in the future."

Do the troops feel we should stay to defend the honor of those who died there?

“It hurts,” Specialist Robert Soto of the 26th Infantry, who spent 12 months in the valley from 2008 to 2009, and saw half of his platoon killed or wounded, told the NY Times. “It hurts on a level that — three units from the Army, we all did what we did up there. And we all lost men. We all sacrificed. I was 18 years old when I got there. I really would not have expected to go through what we went through at that age... It confuses me, why it took so long for them to realize that we weren’t making progress up there.”

That is Soto pictured, sprinting for his life from an ambush. He's not confused about why the US is pulling out. He's confused about why it didn't happen long ago.

The same question could be asked about Iraq and Afghanistan as a whole.

Josh Brollier: No time for "quiet diplomacy" with Israel

A favorite professor of mine once told me that the more you learn about history, the more you realize how little you really know, and how much you still have to learn. Last night, I was both moved and angered to further learn about the ongoing destruction and blockade of the Gaza strip. The award winning Palestinian journalist, Mohammed Omer, showed photographs and told us many moving stories about his life and experiences in Gaza. These stories included the demolition of Mohammed’s home and loss of his brother and neighbors.

Many of the tragic experiences Mohammed shared occurred before the election of the Hamas government, the siege of Gaza and last year’s Israeli offensive, Operation Cast Lead. Mohammed described a major shift in Israeli military policy after Israeli settlements in Gaza were closed, in 2005. Following the “disengagement,” Israeli air strikes increased and carried out house demolitions. Prior to 2005, Israel had primarily used bulldozers. Before, the military would not have wanted to risk affecting Israeli settlers and their children, perhaps frightening the Israeli settlers’ children who would hear the sonic booms or, worse yet, catching Israeli settlers and their children in the cross-fire.

He also described how expert the children in Gaza are in identifying the different bullets and shells being used to destroy their neighborhoods and families. Many of these munitions are manufactured in America and given to the Israeli military.

It’s important that we learn from history by comparing U.S. support for Israel with U.S. support for a previous apartheid state. Desmond Tutu has helped people make such connections. In 2008, Desmond Tutu wrote a report^[1] for the UN Human Rights council that detailed the 2006 murders of 18 members of a single Palestinian family living in Beit Hanoun. Tutu concluded that these reckless attacks by the Israeli military possibly constituted war crimes and should be investigated further. In 1984, regarding South Africa, he testified before the U.S. congress;

“You are either for or against apartheid and not by rhetoric... You are either on the side of the oppressed or on the side of the oppressor. You can't be neutral."^[2]

Few now dispute the manner in which the Reagan administration’s policy of “constructive engagement” and “quiet diplomacy” enabled continued crimes by the apartheid regime in South Africa. The Reagan administration resisted change in South Africa and even collaborated with racist elements in Pretoria. After the decline of the Soviet Union, the popular liberation movement and massive surge in anti-apartheid protests within South Africa were no longer easily labeled as “clients of Moscow” or “terrorists.” International outcry and political activism within the United States were so strong that the Congress finally passed the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act of 1986, initially introduced in 1972. Ronald Reagan vetoed the bill, but then the veto was over-ridden by Congress, as there was bi-partisan support with many conservatives then beginning to speak out against apartheid.

Through years of constructive engagement, Reagan’s pro-consul for African Affairs, Chester Crocker, refused to meet with black leaders in the liberation struggle. Indigenous Africans’ experiences and opinions were disregarded while the State Department decided to base its strategy in a belief that the brutal, colonial white-minority government would gradually lead a peaceful transition to inclusive democracy.

This strategy was not only based on a fantasy, it was an insult to black Africans facing repression and had real implications in terms of human lives. During Reagan’s presidency, at least 3,000 people would die, mostly at the hands of the South African police and military. Another 20,000, including 6,000 children, according to one estimate by a human rights group, would be arrested under "state of emergency" decrees.^[3]

As Reagan was speaking of strategic interests, about minerals and how South Africa was such a “friendly nation,”^[4] people were suffering on the ground. It was no easy task to build the anti-apartheid movement from within the United States either. Pallo Jordan, a member of the ANC, wrote:

“The majority of South Africans see the people of the USA, who came to their support, as their friend. But he/she would be a very foolish South African who imagines that such support was a spontaneous response based on principles shared by democrats the world over. We sweated blood to mobilize support among the US population! Literally scores of African-American students were expelled from Universities and Colleges for agitating for their institutions to dis-invest from South Africa!”

The United States has faced and is facing a similar diplomatic question with the nation of Israel. The international community is well aware that Israel consistently abuses human rights. Discriminatory policies against Arabs and Palestinians are strikingly reminiscent of apartheid in South Africa and fit the definition according to international human rights law.^[5] Israeli maintenance of a brutal military occupation of the Palestinian territories is nearing a half-century in duration. The Gaza strip has been under Israeli siege and blockade since 2007. Israel’s recent major military offensive, which occurred as President Obama was being sworn into office, was a 22-day attack on the civilian population and infrastructure in Gaza and caused over 1400 Palestinian casualties. The “security fence,” or “apartheid/separation wall,” continues to be built inside Palestine to annex further Palestinian land and resources. Additionally, in his recent trip to Washington, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was unrepentant about the new Israeli settlements being built in the Palestinian territories of East Jerusalem the West Bank.

With all of these indictments facing the Israeli government, what position has the Obama administration taken towards Israel? Media outlets have described the administration’s policy as one of “tough love.”^[6] Both President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have made statements condemning Israeli settlement expansion, but they have also asserted that the United States’ commitment to Israel is “rock-solid, unwavering, enduring and forever.”^[7] Beyond words, the United States has just signed a $250 million arms deal with Israel on top of the annual $3 billion that the U.S. already gives to Israel in military aid.^[8] Given these factors, it seems that Obama’s policy of “tough love” towards Israel is even weaker than Reagan’s policy of “quiet diplomacy” towards apartheid South Africa. And just as Pretoria was never interested in complying with constructive engagement’s recommendations,^[9] Israel obviously does not seem too deterred by the Obama administration’s occasional slogans. They likely understand the largely theatrical role of the U.S. presidency.

Looking back at the sacrifices of those in the anti-apartheid struggle, its time that people in the United States step up our organizing, educational efforts and the level of risk we are willing to take to non-violently challenge this unabashed military support for Israel. We should also draw courage from our friends in Palestine, Israel and elsewhere who are facing much harsher consequences for non-violent resistance. If we are ever to challenge the status quo policy of “tough love,” we’ve got to have a vocal opposition movement that the Obama administration, the corporations and the Israeli government can see and hear. Its time we kick up the volume and cut off the funding. No more military aid to Israel!

Joshua Brollier is a co-coordinator with Voices for Creative Non-Violence in Chicago. He can be reached at joshua@vcnv.org.

^[1] http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/docs/9session/A.HRC.9.26.doc

^[2] In testimony on Capitol Hill, 1984.

^[3] http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2004/06/09/reagans_heart_of_darkness/

^[4] “Can we abandon a country that has stood beside us in every war we've ever fought, a country that strategically is essential to the free world in its production of minerals we all must have and so forth?” Ronald Reagan

^[5] http://palestinechronicle.com/view_article_details.php?id=14921

^[6] http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/mar/17/hillary-clinton-israel

^[7] http://washingtonindependent.com/79977/clinton-declares-u-s-bond-with-israel-rock-solid

^[8] http://www.democracynow.org/2010/3/26/headlines#15

^[9] Constructive Engagement? Chester Crocker & American Policy in South Africa, Namibia & Angola, 1981–1988: J. E. Davies, 2007.

Steve Burns: Will the U.S. leave Iraq?

Since the March elections, anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al Sadr has emerged as a kingmaker.

Nearly two years ago, massive resistance by the Iraqi populace and a strong majority within the Iraqi parliament forced the Bush administration to the bargaining table to sign a US-Iraq withdrawal agreement that required that "All the United States Forces shall withdraw from all Iraqi territory no later than December 31, 2011." Since that time, officials within the U.S. military have often suggested that the agreement's 2011 withdrawal date could be "adjusted", allowing for some long-term presence of the U.S. military in Iraq.

The most recent example of U.S. military push-back against the withdrawal agreement was a statement by Gen. Ray Odierno, the top US commander in Iraq, that the US might delay the withdrawal of U.S. combat forces if violence or political instability increased after the Iraqi elections held in early March. Odierno's comments brought a quick response from his boss, Defense Secretary Gates, that plans for withdrawal - which would draw down US troops to 50,000 by September - were "on track", and no plans for delay were being considered.

Despite President Obama's February 2009 commitment to abide by the US-Iraq agreement's requirement to withdraw all U.S. troops from Iraq by the end of 2011, rumors continue to circulate that the U.S. will stay in Iraq past the 2011 deadline. In a report entitled, "All Troops Out By 2011? Not So Fast," written shortly after Obama's February 2009 speech, independent journalist Jeremy Scahill cited a report by NBC Pentagon correspondent Jim Miklaszeswki that "military commanders, despite this Status of Forces Agreement with the Iraqi government that all U.S. forces would be out by the end of 2011, are already making plans for a significant number of American troops to remain in Iraq beyond that 2011 deadline, assuming that Status of Forces Agreement agreement would be renegotiated. And one senior military commander told us that he expects large numbers of American troops to be in Iraq for the next 15 to 20 years."

Of course, no one should accept Presidential assurances at face value, given our country's long history of failing to live up to the terms of treaties it has signed (as any Native American can attest.) But the length of the U.S. stay in Iraq is no longer purely a matter for Americans to decide. As even Jim Miklaszeswki's anonymous Generals acknowledge, any stay past 2011 would require renegotiation of the withdrawal agreement with the Iraqi government. Could the U.S. successfully pressure the Iraqi government to renegotiate the 2011 withdrawal deadline?

That prospect is looking much less likely, as U.S. hopes for a longer stay in Iraq were dealt a serious blow with the March elections in Iraq. Although most media attention has focused on the fight between Prime-Minister-wannabees Ayad Allawi and Nouri al Maliki, perhaps the most unexpected - and potentially most significant - result of the election was the strong showing by the "Sadrist" slate endorsed by Iraqi cleric Muqtada al Sadr. Sadr, who once led his Mahdi Army in an armed uprising against U.S. troops, hasn't been heard from much since he left Iraq in 2007 to study in the Iranian holy city of Qom. But in the March elections, al-Sadr's supporters won 40 seats in the Iraqi parliament, making them the largest component in the Iraqi National Coalition (INC), a Shia alliance that holds 70 seats in the new Parliament. As the BBC explained: "The INC holds the balance of power, since without it, neither Mr Allawi's Iraqiyya bloc (with 91 seats) nor Mr Maliki's State of Law Coalition (with 89) can muster the necessary majority of 163 seats. So the INC can tilt the balance either way, and is strongly placed to veto any candidate or development of which it disapproves."

In all of Iraq, it would be hard to find a public figure as strongly opposed to the U.S. military presence as Muqtada al Sadr, and al Sadr now enjoys the enviable position of being able to decide who the next Iraqi Prime Minister will be. We can be sure that a guarantee not to renegotiate the 2011 withdrawal deadline will be the key demand he extracts in return for his support.

And even after the Prime Minister is chosen, we can expect al Sadr to use his block of 40 seats in Parliament to hold any Iraqi government to the original terms of the withdrawal agreement. Sadr only needs to prevent government reconsideration of the withdrawal agreement in order to force a complete U.S. withdrawal in 2011, and, as part of the governing coalition, he could accomplish that goal simply by withdrawing his support and causing the government to fall.

Although you won't often see comparisons made between the Parliamentary politics of Iraq and those of the Netherlands, there's a clear parallel between the current situation in Iraq and developments in the Netherlands earlier this year that forced a withdrawal of all Dutch troops from Afghanistan. The elected government, a multi-party coalition, came under strong pressure from the U.S. to reverse a plan for all Dutch troops to withdraw from Afghanistan by the end of this year. Several members of the coalition government buckled under U.S. pressure, but the Dutch Labor Party, a minority member of the governing coalition, refused to go along, causing the government to fall. Without a functioning government to enact the changes demanded by the U.S., the withdrawal is proceeding as planned, with Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende saying of the Dutch mission, "If nothing else will take its place, then it ends."

For the Generals who want 15 more years - or even two more years - in Iraq, the options are quickly running out. Without a willing partner to renegotiate the 2011 deadline, their only option would be to repudiate the agreement, a move that would spark a quick return of the Iraqi insurgency on a massive scale. Responding to a nationwide armed uprising would force the Generals to ship tens of thousands of U.S. troops back into Iraq from Afghanistan, at the same time that the U.S. is desperately trying to keep control of the situation there. "Imperial overstretch" is far too mild a term for what the U.S. would be facing if it decided to abrogate the U.S.-Iraq withdrawal agreement.

But what about the contractors? Couldn't the U.S. evade the withdrawal requirement by replacing members of the uniformed military with Blackwater-style private contractors? Not really. First of all, doing so would require an Iraqi government willing to look the other way while the subterfuge was carried out, and any government with Muqtada al Sadr as a key power-player isn't going to do that. Furthermore, while armed mercenaries are what first comes to mind when we hear "private contractors", armed contractors make up only a small percentage of the total number of contractors in Iraq. Most of the U.S.-paid contractors now in Iraq are acting in support roles, working in food service, laundry and construction on massive U.S. bases. These contractors leave when the U.S. troops leave. Finally, a little-noticed (in the U.S.) provision in the U.S.-Iraq withdrawal agreement revokes the legal immunity enjoyed by U.S. contractors at the height of the U.S. occupation. Once the first armed contractor is arrested and put on trial by the Iraqi justice system, how many minutes would it take before every one of these armed thugs has booked a plane ticket out of the country?

At this point, it seems appropriate to reflect on the goals of those in power in the U.S. when we invaded Iraq, and how far we are from achieving a single one of them. Iraq was supposed to be a center of U.S. power in the Middle East, a base from which we could threaten neighboring countries, a privatized, free-market neoliberal model for economic "reform" in the Arab world, and a gusher of guaranteed dirt-cheap gas for our SUV's and lucrative contracts for U.S. oil companies. None of these things have been achieved, and the credit for thwarting the twisted goals of our "leaders" should properly go to the millions of Iraqis and Americans who opposed and struggled against the U.S. war and occupation of Iraq.

In fact, the most important lesson that we can take away from our nine-year occupation of Iraq - and what a high price the Iraqi people have paid for this lesson - is that a corrupt partnership between the richest corporations on the planet and the most powerful military machine on the planet can be defeated. It's not only in the movies that the invaders are sent packing. How we can apply the lessons of Iraq to ending the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan will be the subject of a future article.

Steve Burns is Program Director of Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice.