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Logical Withdrawal From Iraq
House of Representatives - June 22, 2005

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to talk about an issue which is beginning to be much more of an issue in this Congress, and certainly in this country, and that is the question of how long are we going to stay in Iraq?

Watch this floor speech [Click here to get Windows Media Player]

There are those who think that we should stay endlessly, apparently. The military is preparing for a couple of years of staying. Last week a couple of oil workers from Iraq came through talking to various Members of Congress. These 55-year-old Iraqi oil workers said there will be no peace in Iraq until the occupation is over. Until you leave, the present conditions will continue.

Now, there are a lot of people who still believe the President. Remember, this is the President that told us that there were weapons of mass destruction and there were connections to al Qaeda, and that now they have the White House saying we are in the last throes of the insurgency.

But when you talk to Iraqis who live on the ground, work on the ground, work in the oil industry, they said we are at 1 1/2 billion barrels a day, and we will never get any more than that until we are able to get some peace and calm and some investments to come in and change the oil industry.

Now, you say, well, that is just two oil workers. Well, 82, remember that number, 82 Iraqi Parliamentarians have sent a letter to their Speaker of the House demanding that the U.S. withdraw its troops from Iraq.

Those are not wild-eyed people in the United States who are calling for the withdrawal of American troops. This is 82 members of the Iraq Parliament who were elected. I mean, we say they have a democracy over there. Some of these leaders come from the United Iraqi Alliance, which is a collection or a coalition of religious Shiite parties that has a majority of the 275 seats.

So, again, we are not talking about a splinter group somewhere, we are talking about people in the main governing group in the Iraqi Parliament are calling for an end. Their demand is still, although not a majority, it is a large majority, and it has not been endorsed by the Prime Minister yet.

But the demand will certainly come from an ever greater number of Parliamentarians as time goes on. At the moment, most Iraqi politicians already wish the United States would leave, but are afraid that the guerilla movement will kill them without U.S. protection.

This letter has not been released in the United States. You have to find it somewhere on the Web. Now, in this House we have a group called Out of Iraq Caucus.

And the question is, what are we up to? What do we really want to do? Well, I think you ought to have a plan. And there are certainly a lot of plans that have been laid out. One of them is laid out by Gerald Helman, who was a former Ambassador of the United States, who says, first of all, the United States should have a phased withdrawal to be completed in 1 year.

Why is that? Because you do not want to create chaos. If we walked away tomorrow, we would have chaos.

The second thing he says, by prearrangement before that withdrawal occurs, the Iraq and Arab League, or collection of Arab states, would ask the United Nations Security Council to establish a transition political, economic development, and peace enforcement authority to assist the Iraqi Government in its recovery efforts. And finally, the United States could offer logistical support. We are really the only ones capable of doing it, and the financial support as well as the military units on a transitional basis under U.N. command, under U.N. command.

I think we can handle a Brit or a German or somebody being in command. The United States, Japan and the other oil Arabs can contribute money and NATO could provide much of the staff, planning and headquarters personnel, but competent boots on the ground will be hard to find. They are going to have to use some of our people. We all watched the United Nations do this very same thing in Cambodia. Most people were unaware of it, but that is exactly the method.

We have to begin the process of withdrawal from Iraq. There is no way we are going to win it all and have peace and harmony as long as we are viewed as conquerors and occupiers, and 82 members of the Iraqi parliament have asked.

That must be only the beginning.

Ambassador Helman on UN Option
Representative of the U.S.A. to the European Office of the United Nations
Center for Media and Democracy
June 20, 2005
(Entered into the Congressional Record by Congressman McDermott)

Ambassador Gerald B. Helman writes: "......On replacing the US with the UN in Iraq[:] It seems clear that US public opinion is ready for a real exit strategy. But I suspect that the Administration has not yet given up its hope of turning Iraq into a long-term strategic base and asset allowing control of the Middle East and the oil that goes with it. And to turn it all over to the UN would be humiliating. Much would depend upon how the process is rolled-out. Here's an example:

• The US would announce a phased withdrawal, to be completed one year hence;

• (by prearrangement) Iraq and the Arab League (or a collection of Arab states) would ask the UNSC to establish a transition political, economic development and peace enforcement authority to assist the Iraqi Government in its recovery efforts; and

• The US would offer logistical (we're the only one capable) and financial support, as well as military units, on a transitional basis, under UN command (we might be able to swallow the humiliation if the commander is a Brit or German). The UK, Japan, the oil Arabs and others can contribute lots of money. NATO could provide much of the staff, planning and headquarters personnel. But competent boots on the ground might be harder to come by.

I agree that the Cambodia operation (and, more recently, East Timor) could serve as a model. While Cambodia was a mixed success, it was nevertheless a success.

The United Nations Strategy as a Resolution of the Iraq Crisis
"Informed Comment" by Juan Cole, Professor of History at the University of Michigan
June 20, 2005
(Entered into the Congressional Record by Congressman McDermott)

The United States has failed militarily in Iraq, and the situation there is deteriorating rapidly. A protracted guerrilla war is increasingly becoming an unconventional civil war. The US can mount operations against infiltrators on the Syrian border, but cannot permanently close off those borders. The US can prevent set piece battles from being fought by militias. It cannot prevent night-time raids. Seven bodies showed up Sunday in East Baghdad, executed. They were almost certainly victims of this shadowy sectarian war.

Eighty-two Iraqi parliamentarians have sent a letter to the speaker of the house demanding that the United States withdraw its troops from Iraq. Some of the leaders of this movement come from the United Iraqi Alliance, the coalition of religious Shiite parties that has a majority of the 275 seats. Their demand is still that of a (sizeable) minority and has not been endorsed by Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari. The demand will certainly come from an ever greater number of parliamentarians as time goes on. At the moment, most Iraqi politicians already wish the US would leave, but are afraid that the guerrilla movement would kill them without US protection.

As its allies draw down their forces in the next few months, the US looks increasingly as though it is going it alone in Iraq. As a unilateral power there, it lacks legitimacy. It is not going to be able to stay in that country, and will not be given permanent bases there by an elected Iraqi government.

The United States will eventually have to go to the United Nations and request that it send a peace-enforcing mission to Iraq, as the US military withdraws. The relevant model is the UNTAC experience in Cambodia, which, while it had substantial flaws, was also a relative success. In the long term, perhaps 5-10 years, the Iraqi government may develop its own military that could keep order. That development is far enough off, however, that there is likely to be a significant gap between the time the US leaves and the time the Iraqis can fend for themselves.

A US withdrawal without a United Nations replacement would risk throwing Iraq into civil war. Such a civil war, moreover, would very likely not remain restricted in its effects only to Iraqi soil. A civil war in Iraq would certainly lead to even more sabotage of petroleum production, reducing Iraq's production from the current 1.5 million barrels a day to virtually nothing.

If a civil war broke out that drew in Iran, the unrest could spread to Iran's oil-rich Khuzistan province, which has a substantial Arab population, and which has seen political violence in recent months. The instability could also spread to Saudi Arabia's Eastern Province, which is traditionally Shiite but dominated since 1913 by the anti-Shiite Wahhabis.

If the petroleum production of Iraq, Iran and Saudi Arabia was put offline by a vast regional conflict that involved substantial terrorism and sabotage, the price of oil would skyrocket. Only 80 million barrels of petroleum are typically produced daily in the world. Much of that is consumed by the producing country. What is special about the countries of the Gulf is that they have relatively small populations and little industry, and therefore export a great deal of their petroleum. Saudi Arabia produces 9 million barrels a day, and can do 11 in a pinch.

Iran produces 4 million. Iraq could produce 3 million on a good day without sabotage. If nearly 20 percent of the world's petroleum supply became unavailable, and given ever increasing demand in China and India and political instability in Venezuela and Nigeria, the price could rise so high that it would throw the world into a Second Great Depression.

The old dream of James Schlesinger and Henry Kissinger that the United States could in such an emergency simply occupy and secure the Saudi oil fields has been shown to be a dangerous fantasy. Petroleum is produced in a human security environment. Where the political structures are felt by a substantial portion of the population to be illegitimate, they can and will simply sabotage the petroleum pipelines and refineries.

The US cannot risk this scenario, which while a little unlikely, is entirely possible as a consequence of its withdrawal from an Iraq that it radically destabilized.

The United Nations force put into Iraq should be a peace-enforcing, not a peace-keeping, force. That is, its rules of engagement should allow robust military operations to prevent the parties from massacring one another, and UN troops should always be permitted to defend themselves resolutely if attacked. Further, the United States should lend the United Nations forces close air support upon their request.

Moreover, the UN must at the same time enter into serious negotiations with the warring parties (Kurds, Shiites, Sunni Arabs) to seek a political settlement.

Satish Nambiar writes: "It is a matter of record that it is not possible to have successful peacekeeping without a determined and successful peace process. Peacekeeping and peacebuilding activities are not self-sustainable, they have to be nurtured by a process of negotiations, or peacemaking, during which the parties to the conflict are made to redefine their interests and develop a commitment to a political settlement. The fact that most successful missions in the last decade, or even the partially successful ones--Namibia, El Salvador, Cambodia and Mozambique--were the result of years of negotiations, in which many third-party international actors, including the USA, participated, is no accident.

"Although the wars in these areas went on for a long time, they illustrate that it is better to take the time to get the details of a settlement right, than to initiate a peacekeeping process that is flawed in its concept and content, as so glaringly made apparent in the inadequately planned and prepared United Nations deployment in the former Yugoslavia and Somalia. It takes firm political resolve and unified concerted action from outside actors to make the parties to the conflict come to terms with one another, and work towards a negotiated settlement."

All Iraqis would see the United Nations as having more legitimacy than the United States. The UN would be much more likely to be able to negotiate a settlement among the Sunnis and Shiites than is the US. And, the world has more troops than the US does. (The Europeans are over-stretched, so the force would mainly come from the global South. Iraq does not want neighbors involved, so South and Southeast Asia seem likely providers of troops.)

Would the Iraqi government accept a United Nations military mission? Almost certainly. Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani has often attempted to involve the UN, and would welcome such a development. The Sunni Arabs would also much prefer to deal with the UN than with the US.

Would the United Nations be willing to take it on? It would be a very hard sell. But remember that if the members of the military mission succeeded, they would have gained enormous good will from the Iraqi government, which would soon be able to pump 5 million barrels of petroleum a day. That is, participation could be worth billions in future contracts. The US could also provide substantial incentives. For countries like Pakistan, India, and Malaysia, such benefits could prove decisive.

Would the Americans be willing to cede Iraq to the blue helmets? It is not impossible. US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld appears to want to draw down US troop strength in Iraq on a fairly short timetable, and even he must realize the need for a replacement.

Of course, the Bush administration may well resist this move right to the end. But that makes this plan an ideal platform for the Democratic Party in 2006 and 2008. Instead of Kerry's vague mul.ti.lat.eral.ism, let us specify an UNTAC-like mission for the UN. The entire world depends on Gulf petroleum; the entire world should step up to ensure security for Iraq and the region. The US will continue to have to bear a significant share of the costs, but these would become bearable if several allies shared them.

As recently as the 1950s, President Dwight Eisenhower still saw the United Nations as a noble project essential to the welfare of the United States, and he denounced the 1956 invasion of Egypt by Britain, France and Israel for endangering the UN ideal. Ironically, the Bush administration's attempt to do a unilateral end run around the United Nations could afford the American Left the opportunity to make international cooperation and international law popular again with the US public. The alternative for Americans is to continue to squander blood and treasure on a task too big for one country, even the world's sole superpower.

45 Dead, Dozens Wounded in Guerrilla Attacks

The Associated Press reports that a guerrilla wearing a bomb belt walked into a restaurant near the Green Zone in downtown Baghdad that was popular with Iraqi police and soldiers, and detonated his payload, killing 23 and wounding 45. Patrick Quinn writes: "The Baghdad bomber detonated his explosives-laden vest at the Ibn Zanbour restaurant, 400 yards from the main gate of the heavily fortified Green Zone--U.S. and Iraqi government headquarters. The cafe was popular with Iraqi police and soldiers. The dead included seven police officers. The bodyguards of Iraqi Finance Minister Ali Abdel-Amir Allawi and 16 other police were injured, police and hospital officials said. The minister was not in the restaurant.''

Quinn's details make me wonder if the finance minister sometimes did eat at Ibn Zanbour, and if the guerrillas thought he might be there. At the very least, wounding a man's bodyguards is a pretty obvious threat against his person. Allawi is related to current Vice Premier Ahmad Chalabi and to former interim Prime Minister Iyad"