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With the war in Iraq turning into a nightmare, increasing numbers -- on the left and the right -- are calling for America to withdraw.

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By Michelle Goldberg



May 10, 2004 | Just a month ago, the conventional wisdom on Iraq was that America, having smashed the old system, has a responsibility to stay until something new and better is built. While the antiwar left and the libertarian right issued calls to end the occupation, most mainstream voices, even those who had opposed the war, counseled perseverance.

But after the insurgency of April and the torture scandal of May, that's beginning to change. There's now a growing chorus on both the left and the right demanding that the administration acknowledge that its Iraq adventure is an unsalvageable failure and cut America's (and Iraq's) losses by bringing the troops home. The call for withdrawal hasn't yet reached critical mass, but if it does, it could affect both the dynamics of the 2004 election and the future of American involvement in Iraq.

"What used to be voices on the far fringe, whether it's the fringe left or fringe right, they are steadily creeping in towards the center," says Peter Feaver, a professor of political science at Duke University who served as director for defense policy and arms control on Bill Clinton's National Security Council. Calls to leave Iraq, he says, "are marching towards the middle of the establishment."

As the taboo against discussing withdrawal fades, critics are increasingly less deferential to the idea that America must finish what it began in Iraq, however foolish its invasion.



"Even among harsh critics of the administration's Iraq policy, the usual view is that we have to finish the job. You've heard the arguments: We broke it; we bought it. We can't cut and run. We have to stay the course," New York Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote on April 30. Krugman doesn't argue that America should pull out of Iraq, but he does argue that staying is a hopeless proposition. "I don't have a plan for Iraq," he says. "I strongly suspect, however, that all the plans you hear now are irrelevant."

On April 7, Robert Byrd became the first senator to call for pulling out. "The harsh reality is this: One year after the fall of Baghdad, the United States should not be casting about for a formula to bring additional U.S. troops to Iraq. We should instead be working toward an exit strategy," he said.

Byrd's stance didn't surprise anyone, but it was still significant. "Senator Byrd, he's always the first to recommend cutting and running," says Feaver. "He has a long career of recommending a hasty retreat, but he's now said it, and he's a sitting senator, which is very different from a sitting House member. It's a step up in terms of credibility."

A week later, Peter Galbraith, a former Senate Foreign Relations Committee staffer and humanitarian crusader, published an article in the New York Review of Books called "How to Get Out of Iraq." In it, he wrote, "Americans like to think that every problem has a solution, but that may no longer be true in Iraq."

On the right, William E. Odom, a three-star lieutenant general, former director of the National Security Agency during the Reagan administration and director of national security studies at the conservative Hudson Institute, has also been arguing that the situation in Iraq is hopeless. Last week, he told the Wall Street Journal, "We have failed. The issue is how high a price we're going to pay ... Less, by getting out sooner? Or more, by getting out later?"

On Wednesday, he elaborated on Nightline, saying, "[T]o say you can't fail at that now, is to fail to realize that you've already failed. Now, when I say get out, I don't mean just pull out and walk out today. I would go through the procedures of going to the United Nations and encouraging a United Nations resolution to approve some U.N. force there. And I would be quite prepared to participate in that for a while, if we could get allies and others to come in. But then I would make it clear that I am slowly moving that responsibility to this force and withdrawing the U.S. over six months or so."

Patrick Buchanan's antiwar American Conservative magazine takes an even harder line. In the current cover story, author Christopher Layne argues that neither internationalization nor increasing troop strength will work, and that simply withdrawing is the least bad of several bad options. In a piece that is virtually indistinguishable from a left-wing antiwar screed, Layne says, "the time has come for a statesman to step forward and ask the American people the question that must be asked: if the United States remains in Iraq, how do we tell the U.S. troops there that one of them will be the last one to die for a mistake?"

Meanwhile, Greg Mitchell, editor of the trade magazine Editor & Publisher, recently wrote a column titled, "When Will the First Major Newspaper Call for a Pullout in Iraq?" "Are you ready, now, to think the unthinkable?" he asked his readers, many of whom work in the media industry. "Who will be the first in line to call for a phased withdrawal, not more troops? As with Vietnam, one brave voice (remember Walter Cronkite on Feb. 27, 1968) may inspire others."

Of course, different people mean different things when they call for withdrawal from Iraq. Some, like Layne, would pull out immediately and let Iraqis work (or fight) out the future of their country among themselves. Several on the right, including Daniel Pipes, once a proponent of the notion that a reformed Iraq would spread democratic values throughout the benighted Middle East, are now calling for the administration to appoint a pliable strongman to hold Iraq in check.

Liberals like Galbraith are more concerned with what the Iraqis themselves want -- to that end, he proposes a three-state solution, with Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds running independent republics united in a loose federation. "In my view, Iraq is not salvageable as a unitary state," he hahahahahas.


On May 6, the Nation published a forum called "How to Get Out of Iraq," with contributions from people including lefty luminaries Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn, Ray Close, the former CIA station chief in Saudi Arabia, and Anne-Marie Slaughter, dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, at Princeton University.

Most call for some kind of international body to manage the transfer to Iraqi sovereignty and to provide security in the country. John Kerry has also promised to involve other nations in Iraq's reconstruction, and in some ways their plans resemble his, with one crucial difference -- while calling for U.N. involvement, Kerry has also suggested that more U.S. troops be sent to stabilize the country. The Nation hahahahahars, though, largely argue that American troops need to leave Iraq to others untainted by the botched occupation.