"The Way Out of War" — the best Iraq withdrawal plan I have seen

Here is the Polk-McGovern Iraq withdrawal plan Harper's Magazine article I talked about in this post. This is the plan I stick by: the "blueprint for leaving Iraq now". You won't be disappointed. It is a well thought up, not very — if at all — politicized (in the partisan sense of the word), and fact-checked. This article (and subsequent research done by me) convinced me that the US and others should get out of Iraq, but not abandon the Iraqis to reap in the havoc that the United States-led invasion and occupation has created. Thanks Harper's for posting the article in its lengthly entirety!

Some excerpts:

Staying in Iraq is not an option. ... Polls show that as few as 2 percent of Iraqis consider Americans to be liberators. ... We must acknowledge the Iraqis’ right to ask us to leave, and we should set a firm date by which to do so.

We suggest that phased withdrawal should begin on or before December 31, 2006, with the promise to make every effort to complete it by June 30, 2007.

... [withdraw] will effect massive savings. Current U.S. expenditures run at approximately $246 million each day, or more than $10 million an hour, with costs rising steadily each year.

... the temporary services of an international stabilization force to police the country during and immediately after the period of American withdrawal.

... America should immediately release all prisoners of war and close its detention centers.

... at least $25 billion will be required to repair the Iraqi infrastructure alone—this is quite apart from the damage done to private property. The reconstruction can be, and should be, done by Iraqis, as this would greatly benefit the Iraqi economy, but the United States will need to make a generous contribution...

“[Iraqi oil] production-sharing agreements” are highly favorable to the concessionaires, an unfair advantage has been taken... [they] deprive Iraq of as much as $194 billion in revenues. To most Iraqis, and indeed to many foreigners, the move to turn over Iraq’s oil reserves to American and British companies surely confirms that the real purpose of the invasion was to secure, for American use and profit, Iraq’s lightweight and inexpensively produced oil.

The monetary cost of the basic set of programs outlined here is roughly $7.25 billion. The cost of the “second tier” programs cannot be as accurately forecast, but the planning and implementation of these is likely to cost somewhere in the vicinity of $10 billion. Seventeen and a quarter billion dollars is a lot of money, but assuming that these programs cut short the American occupation by only two years, they would save us at least $200 billion.

See also this post on some of the the horrors and contradictions of US foreign policy.

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