The insurgency, demonstrations, and protests which we are witnessing in Iraq are dramatic reflections of the frustrations which the Iraqi people feel at being so effectively excluded from participation in the determination of their country’s future. During the year and a half since so-called independence from Saddam Hussein’s regime most Iraqis have remained without a voice in the nation’s destiny, and this is a time when the nation is being subjected to a destructive force far surpassing anything ever before seen in the country. If anti- Americanism seems to be emerging as a focus for some of the recent protests, it is because the Iraqi people recognize that it is really only the awesome U.S. power which enables the Baghdad governments to rule without a popular mandate and to follow policies contrary to the aspirations of the Iraqi people.

The war in Iraq today pits brother against brother, the insurgent freedom fighters against the supporters of the Baghdad government. Both sides claim to represent the Iraqi people, but in reality neither side does. The most effective Islamic extremist propaganda says that the Baghdad governments are mere puppets of the U.S., corrupt lackeys of the imperialists. Every escalation of the war, every new contingent of U.S./coalition troops confirms these charges and wins new recruits to the insurgency, yet the overwhelming majority of the Iraqi people now thirst desperately for peace and oppose any further expansion of the war. They see clearly that the present policy of potential escalation only puts peace ever further into the future and merely guarantees an even greater destruction of Iraqi society. There are now more than 175,000 American troops in Iraq, most of them knowing and caring little about the customs and practices and many of them involved in destroying Iraqi people and property. This creates friction which generously feeds the anti-American propaganda, and the fact that the war kills far more innocent civilians than it does insurgents is a tragic reality of life in the Iraqi countryside. Those who escape death by bombings must often abandon their destroyed villages and homes and seek shelter somewhere else where life is even more miserable than it was before. In general, these people do not blame the insurgents for their plight. It is the men in the planes, who drop death and destruction from the skies, who appear to them to be their enemies and not their liberators. How can they see it otherwise?

The United States chooses to support those elements in Iraq which appear to be most devoted to the U.S.’s wishes for Iraq’s future. These elements have never been viewed by the Iraqi people as their spokesmen. Paul Bremer was not, nor was Bremer’s successors.
Thus, it has been the U.S.’s antipathy to popular government in Iraq, together with its hope for an ultimate military solution, which has not only contradicted the deepest aspirations of the Iraqi people, but actually undermined the objective for which we believe Americans to be fighting in Iraq. To us, America’s first objective is to have an anti-clerical, or at least a non-clerical, Iraq, whereas the Iraqi people’s objective is to have peace. They dislike the insurgency, but they dislike war even more, especially after years of bitterness from a repressive dictatorship which has rotted the very fabric of Iraqi life. Equally important, we now see clearly that continuance of the war is more likely to spread Islamic radicalism and terrorists in Iraq than contain it. The new social class of military officers and the like which have been created as a direct result of the U.S. involvement, a class of sycophants (Chalabi) who support the war for crass economic reasons, are not the people to whom the US should listen to if it sincerely wishes to hear the voice of Iraq. The Iraqi people reject with scorn this corrupt self-seeking class which cares neither for Iraq nor for the great ideals of America, but thinks only of its own interests.

The opinion is often expressed that there is no alternative to the present U.S. policy in Iraq, neither on the political nor the military side. The alternatives are said to be too fragmented to offer a stable solution, and a cease-fire and U.S. withdrawal are considered unfeasible because it is feared that the insurgents will take over the country by terror. The Iraqi people recognize both of these dangers, but they also recognize the utter futility of the present course and the catastrophic effects which it is having on Iraqi society. Furthermore, they do not agree that there is no alternative to a military dictatorship. The force of Iraqi nationalism is such an alternative. Indeed this is the sole force which can prevent the complete disintegration of Iraq and it is the force around which all of Iraq can unite. Nationalism cannot attain its effective potential in the present Iraqi political climate, where opposition to the government invites open persecution upon oneself and identification with it discredits one in the eyes of the people. Almost two years of this atmosphere has served to drive many of the Iraqi nationalists into the insurgency, and many others into ominous silence.

The argument offered for continuing present U.S. policy is that a total cease-fire and U.S. withdrawal would merely leave Iraq to the insurgency. This argument must be rejected. The insurgents grow stronger because of the mistakes made by Baghdad, not because of their militant ideology or their terror. If Iraq could achieve a government which was clearly responsive to the basic aspirations of the Iraqi people and which was truly independent, there would be no longer any basis for popular support for the rebels. Indeed, the rebels would have lost their reason to rebel, and if any guerilla activity were to continue the Iraqi people would have the will to resist it for they could identify it as being hostile to Iraqi nationalism, contrary to the people’s longing for peace and reconstruction, and therefore of foreign inspiration.

Here is what a solution might be along the following lines.
1. A clear statement by the U.S. of its desire to help the Iraqi people to have a government truly responsive to Iraqi aspirations, and concrete U.S. actions to implement this statement, such as a refusal to support one group in preference of another.
2. A cessation of the bombing of northern and southern Iraq.
3. Limitation of all military operations by U.S. and Iraqi forces to defensive actions; in effect, a cease-fire if the insurgents respond in kind.
4. A convincing demonstration of the U.S. intention to withdraw its forces from Iraq over a specified period of months, with withdrawal actually beginning to take place as a sign of sincerity.
5. A multi-lateral generous effort to help rebuild the country from the destruction which has been wreaked upon Iraq, such aid to be completely free of ideological and political strings and therefore not viewed as an affront to Iraqi independence.

Such a program if implemented with sufficient vigor to convince the now understandably skeptical Iraqi people of its sincerity offers the best hope for uniting them in a constructive effort and for restoring stability in Iraq.

The plan is not perfect, for the question remains of how the U.S. can be sure that the Iraqi government and the militant insurgency would co-operate in such a venture. It is obviously not possible to predict the response of the insurgency to such a program but the installation of a popular government in Iraq, plus a cease-fire and the beginnings of an American withdrawal, would so undercut the insurgency’s position that it is likely to have no alternative but to co-operate.

Finally, if some may question why the U.S. takes the first step, it is because the U.S is militarily the strongest nation in the world. No one can accuse it of cowardice if it chooses to seek peace. To be a genuine leader requires moral strength as well as big guns. America’s history suggests that she has the potential to provide the world this leadership