Here is a very important discussion of "what to do now" for those
concerned about the US's deepening quagmire in Iraq. It is worth reading,
and then - join your favorite activist group to implement! Paul Loeb
is a local writer and activist.

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http://www.presentdanger.org/papers/hope2003.html

FPIF Discussion Paper
July 2003

Hope out of Quagmire: Iraq and Peace Movement Opportunities

By Paul Rogat Loeb
(Paul Rogat Loeb (www.soulofacitizen.org) is the author of Soul of a
Citizen: Living With Conviction in a Cynical Time and board chair of
Peace Action of Washington State. He wrote this contribution for
Foreign Policy in Focus (online at fpif.org). To receive Loeb's
articles directly, send a blank message to
paulloeb-articles-subscribe@....)

Project Against the Present Danger
www.presentdanger.org

In the glow of the Iraq war's initial military success, most American
peace activists felt profoundly demoralized. Between the war being
portrayed as a glamorous spectacle and Bush's seemingly overwhelming
popular support, many who'd recently marched by the millions felt
isolated, defensive, and powerless, fearing their voices no longer
mattered.

Now, as Bush's occupation faces a deepening quagmire, shifting public
sentiment opens up major new opportunities for activism. Just two
months ago, the national mood felt so resistant that it was hard to
raise the most cautious dissenting questions. But polls now suggest
the beginning of a very different national mood, where large numbers
of Americans are having significant doubts. This gives us a chance to
challenge the core fallacies of Bush's foreign policy, revitalize
peace movement activism, and perhaps change some of our national
directions. We can do this by launching a grassroots campaign to
replace the U.S. control over Iraq with an international transitional
authority under United Nations command--an authority that would
control not only military operations, but also Iraq's political and
economic affairs, including its oil-fields. We can work to transform
a beachhead for American empire into an interim government that would
actually have a shot at bringing democracy.

The recent shifts in the polls are staggering. They open up major
opportunities, even if most peace activists haven't yet recognized
this. Driven by the steady U.S. casualties in Iraq and continuing
chaos, a late June Gallup poll found 42% of Americans now believing
things are going badly in Iraq, up from just 13% in early May. Only
56%, according to the same poll, now believe it was worth going to
war in the first place, down from 73% in April. In a Washington
Post-ABC News poll taken in mid-July, six in ten said the war damaged
the image of the United States abroad, half said the conflict caused
permanent damage to U.S. relations with key allies, and 52%
considered the level of U.S. casualties "unacceptable." All this was
before Congress finally began acknowledging the occupation's
political, economic, and human costs.

Before the war, we had something we could fight for--trying to stop
it. When it finally began, this radically limited the peace
movement's immediate possibilities. There was little we could do to
influence its immediate outcome. All we could do was bear witness for
the future. But now the landscape has shifted once again, to one far
more hospitable toward dissenting views. Americans are developing
significant reservations despite scant critical media coverage, no
major peace actions since the end of February, and minimal
questioning by Democratic leaders. If we can begin coalescing public
concern around an alternative to U.S. troops remaining indefinitely
in Iraq, we have a real chance to influence national debate.


Moving Beyond "I told you so."

Although the war has created precisely the kind of mess we predicted,
we need to do more than just repeat, "I told you so," as the
casualties continue to mount. Or gloat about how Bush's imperial
dream is unraveling. We need to offer our own vision of what needs to
be done, supporting the Europeans in pushing to end the current U.S.
control of Iraq, and instead placing the country under UN charge,
policing it with a multinational force that would include significant
Islamic representation. If the U.S. were no longer calling the shots,
this might even allow a process like that which occurred when UN
forces finally ended the East Timor carnage and supervised that
country's transition to democracy.

U.S. troops are now symbols of empire, colonialism, and chaos. The
longer they stay, the more they become targets, and the more Iraqis
will resent the U.S. for imposing our will while failing to secure
the basics of survival, like electricity, clean water, and physical
safety. By contrast, administration by the United Nations--which
represents the entire international community, including eighteen
Arab states--is less likely to be seen as a foreign military
occupation but a transitional administration and is therefore less
likely to encourage armed opposition. Although the new forces will
probably still face some opposition, they won't be tarred with the
same neocolonial agenda. Iraqis won't view them as simply in it to
control the oil or project American domination. Without the
disruption of a growing armed insurgency, efforts at restoring basic
services, maintaining stability, and setting up a democratic and
representative Iraqi government would be far easier.

A shift away from unilateral U.S. control already has broad potential
support. In a late-June Knowledge Network poll, 64% of Americans
wanted the UN to take a leadership role in Iraq, up from 50% in
April. Pushing for such a shift will also let us reach out to
American soldiers who are increasingly frustrated at being given a
mission with no defined end and no clear boundaries between friend
and foe. And to military families angry that they see no clear
timetable for the return of their loved ones. We might even work to
replace Bush's chickenhawk bluster of "Bring them on," with our own
call to "Bring them Home," so long as we make clear that we're
arguing for something more than just abandoning Iraq to chaos.

Ideally, this campaign would be a broad-based effort through which
citizens would reach out both in their communities and to elected
officials. Citizens could gather petitions, write letters to local
papers, meet with editorial boards and congressional representatives,
table, canvass, and vigil in local neighborhoods, pass resolutions in
local governmental and civic groups, and build toward major marches
and rallies. In short, we can reach out through the same kinds of
civic networks that were beginning to foster so much national
dialogue on the eve of the war. We'd work to make sure Iraq stays a
front-and-center issue, in a way that builds on Bush's newfound
vulnerability.

Once citizen groups got moving, they could then pressure key elected
officials to take a stand, including Democratic presidential
candidates and independent-minded Republicans. It will take work to
get the more conservative Democratic presidential candidates and
elected representatives to embrace this demand. But given the
shifting polls, if we muster enough citizen pressure, at least a few
will decide that the call to pull U.S. troops out is popular enough
to risk embracing. We'd want to offer even the more conservative
candidates and elected officials the opportunity to say: "I supported
Bush in good faith, assuming the intelligence reports were correct,
and that he would go in good faith to enlist a broad coalition of
support. I'm glad Saddam Hussein is out, but now that the evidence on
the WMD's still hasn't surfaced, we're alienating the rest of the
world, and the Iraqis want us out. It's time to stop putting our
brave young soldiers at risk."

Could this campaign actually succeed in getting Bush to turn Iraq
over to the UN? Assuming that the situation continues to be a morass,
Bush will face increasing pressure to cut his losses, declare
victory, and leave. Although some in his administration are
ideologically opposed to any key UN role whatsoever, with enough
citizen pressure and media debate the pragmatist wing might actually
view withdrawal as politically preferable to being stuck with an
increasingly unpopular occupation and daily death tolls. Republican
leaders don't want to face an election year with American soldiers
coming home from Iraq in body bags, week after week with no clear end
in sight.


Trade-offs in the Campaign

This raises a difficult question. Is it the job of the peace
movement--or the global community--to help Bush clean up the mess
that he's created? Shouldn't we simply let him stew in it?

If we do succeed in convincing the Bush administration to immediately
let the United Nations administer Iraq, it might increase his
re-election prospects and those of members of Congress who supported
the war. However, it's extremely unlikely that the administration
will instantly accede to these demands. Powerful economic, strategic,
and ideological motivations led to them to attack this oil-rich
nation to begin with. These motivations make it extremely unlikely
that they'll give up the opportunity to try to control Iraq's
political and economic future without a fight. And the more they dig
in their heels and resist, the more time the peace movement will have
to expose the ways in which the U.S. invasion of Iraq was not about
bringing freedom and democracy to a long-oppressed people, but about
controlling the country and its natural resources, and exerting our
unilateral will on the world. Forcing the U.S. to genuinely release
its control over Iraq would be a major setback for the politics of
empire.

While arguing to bring the troops home, we'll also have a chance to
address related questions, like the missing WMD's, America's long
tradition of arming dictators, the key role of oil politics, and the
lies and manipulations that fueled our rush to war--like the
magnification of Saddam Hussein's threat, the notion that we'd be
universally hailed as liberators, and the attacks on generals who
accurately warned of massive post-war troop deployments. Raising
these issues will lead to larger questions about the dangers of
Bush's belligerent unilateralism, and the contrast between the $4
billion a month he's spending in Iraq and his total neglect of a
sinking domestic economy. The more we succeed in this task, the more
we have a chance to breach Bush's image as a national protector.

In response to our arguments, the administration and its supporters
will first insist that things are proceeding fine as they are, and
then probably attack the very idea that the United Nations could to a
better job. Such attacks against the UN will likely further alienate
much of the UN membership, including key American allies, and
embolden them to pursue more independent foreign policies. This
tactic is also likely to backfire here at home, given that public
opinion polls suggest the U.S. still has broad support among U.S.
citizens, and that increasing majorities lean toward exactly the
solution we'll be pushing.

If Bush does eventually withdraw after sustained citizen pressure,
his administration will have been significantly tarnished. And we'll
have a major peace movement victory, which will itself empower
further action. A key value of this campaign would be its ability to
help recover activist momentum and morale--giving people concrete
tasks where they feel their voices can be heard. This is critical.
There's a huge reservoir of citizens who became active in the
opposition to the war, but who've since melted back to private life.
If we can get them re-engaged at this point, they have a chance to
become long-term activists. They may not yet have taken up the
particular issue of troop withdrawal, but that's because most were so
demoralized by the war's quick initial progress and seemingly
overwhelming support that they felt that what happened in Iraq was
totally out of their hands. Now it isn't. Citizens once again can
begin to have a voice, but in a far more potentially receptive
environment.


Activists not Spectators

During the countdown to the war, the clock was running against us.
Our movement grew at an amazing pace, but ran out of time before we
could become powerful enough to reverse the administration's course.
Now time should work in our favor. Unless Iraq suddenly becomes
miraculously pacified, the longer our troops are in there, the more
casualties they will take, and the stronger the case for withdrawal.
Iraqi resistance is unlikely to die down, since the more houses we
raid and civilians we round up the more resentment we stoke--which in
a country as heavily armed as Iraq means more attacks on our
soldiers. Bush is already calling for increased military deployments.
Because the pressure should get greater the longer our troops stay as
occupiers, time is on our side now in a way that it wasn't during the
period leading up to the war. We would want to start such a campaign
quickly, however, because once we approach the 2004 elections much of
the citizen energy we need to draw on will necessarily be diverted
toward defeating Bush in the November election. But if we begin now,
we can erode his standing enough to significantly increase our
chances of doing this.

Finally, working to replacing U.S. control with a UN mandate is a
sufficiently mainstream demand that it should allow us to reassemble
the powerful coalitions created on the eve of the war. It will also
exclude some of the crazier fringes who reject the United Nations as
much as do the neoconservatives. Whether or not we can actually
convince the administration to pursue a wiser course, taking up this
issue gives us the chance to get people moving again, challenge the
core politics of empire, and support policies that would actually
make for a safer world. It gives us the chance to do far more than
watch from the sidelines as passive spectators.