Occupational Hazards

Local protesters want us out of Iraq now. Some Iraqis say not so fast.

by Jared Goyette

	print	email	reply	rss feed

Published: Jan 31, 2007

protests

AND AWAY THEY GO: Four busloads of protesters get ready to hit D.C. on Saturday for the first major anti-war rally since the midterm elections. Photo By: michael m. koehler (CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

The buses left a few minutes late, but they left full. A contingent of Philadelphia union members from 21 locals and peace activists piled into four Greyhounds and departed from Walnut Street around 9 a.m. Saturday en route to the first major anti-war rally since November's midterm elections put a Democratic Congress in power, and a Bush administration intent on troop increases on the defensive.

They arrived at the National Mall in Washington, D.C., two and a half hours later, and joined a gathering mass of anti-war protesters estimated anywhere from 100,000 to half a million. There, Daniel Jeffers, a 14-year-old from Lansdowne, sat above the mass of people and signs, perched in a tree. Gray-haired men and woman handed him digital cameras, and he took pictures of the podium where Sean Penn, several congressional representatives and more than a few raspy-throated activists would speak. He enjoyed his task, but Jeffers was more excited by the fact that this was the 400th tree he had climbed since his first, which he had shimmied up on Glenmore Avenue in Southwest Philadelphia.

"This war, it's stupid," said Jeffers as his foster father, Dexter Lanctot, kept a watchful eye. "This is the first time I've [climbed a tree] for a cause."

Soon, the protesters would join a march featuring a sea of signs and banners so thick that they seemed more a jumble of words — "Impeach," "Escalation," "Bush," "War" — than actual messages. A group of college-aged women joined a group of union activists with a yell, "Go Philly, say no to war!"

The aim of the local protesters was simple, said Kathy Black, a staff member for AFSCME District Council 47, a city workers union, who organized the caravan as part of her work with U.S. Labor Against the War, an umbrella group of unions that aims to end U.S. occupation of Iraq and redirect military spending toward domestic needs.

If all went according to plan, the Philadelphia presence would pressure the city's congressional delegation to sign onto the anti-war movement's current demand: that Congress refuse to fund anything but a full troop withdrawal. Black is particularity hopeful that the area's newest congressmen — Joe Sestak and Pat Murphy, both veterans who defeated Republican incumbents with campaigns calling for redeployment leading to withdrawal — would heed their call.

"We're looking for them to get behind [U.S. Rep.] Dennis Kucinich's proposals, to stop the special budget supplements for the war, and cut off the funding," said Black. "Public-sector unions have seen massive cuts in social spending and services that prevent them from doing their jobs."

Asked for their positions, neither Murphy nor Sestak called for an immediate removal of funding.

"As someone who served in Iraq, it's clear that the president's plan is not working," Murphy e-mailed. "The voters sent a message in November that they wanted a change, and the demonstrations this past weekend were echoing that call. Also, the president claims that he is willing to consider alternatives if they are out there. Fact is, there are. On the campaign trail, I called for a phased redeployment, for a surge in regional diplomacy and for a timeline. The president is ignoring congressional alternatives and that is a huge mistake."

Sestak supports a full withdrawal of U.S. troops within a year, and is willing to support congressional action that would force the Bush administration to set a deadline. Speaking on his cell phone as he left the floor of the House of Representatives earlier this week, Sestak elaborated.

"The hardest thing to do in the military is to withdraw," said Sestak, who served 31 years in the Navy. "And you can't just do it tomorrow, you need to do it safely and firmly. ... But just as importantly, practically and morally, we owe the Iraqis the time to accept the consequences of deciding to accept their responsibility, primarily politically, of what's going on in their country. I would support and I would vote for a deadline — by the end of this year, by which we must, by legislation, be out of Iraq."

While the protesters would applaud that stance, Abdullah Muhsin, international representative of the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions (IFTU), says the prospect of a U.S. withdrawal is to be feared.

The country's largest coalition of unions, the IFTU came to exist shortly after Saddam was toppled and government-sponsored unions were disbanded. The Federation has received support from American unions — IFTU representatives signed a joint declaration with U.S. Labor Against the War — and criticism from the anti-war left for their conditional support of the U.S. presence in Iraq.

Still, their position is nuanced. The IFTU wants Iraq to be free of foreign troops, but they don't want a withdrawal to lead to a full-fledged civil war.

"We are patriots, we are nationalists," Muhsin said on the phone from his offices in London. "We want to see the country sovereign, and while you have foreign troops present the country is not sovereign. But, the removal of foreign troops should happen at a time when the Iraqis have security forces which are fully loyal to Iraq and its constitution, and a police to maintain law and order.

"Unfortunately, both of these institutions have been compromised because of the infiltration of militias and secondly, because they are not culturally trained to be loyal to their country rather than to a political party or a faction, and therefore foreign troops must remain in order to protect the Iraqi civilians."

Muhsin acknowledged that protection has not been effective so far.

"The presence of foreign troops is not preventing the violence now, but you can imagine what would happen if they left," he continued. "Obviously, you would have a chaotic situation and civil war. ... If the American troops leave, Iraq will become a bloodbath and turn toward the dark ages."

An official with the national oil union in Iraq who identified himself as Abdull-Latif during a telephone interview last week has a different perspective. "We are against any occupation," he said in Arabic. "It was imposed on us and we want Iraq to be completely sovereign so we can make our own decisions."

So as the protesters circled back toward the mall, they dispersed into groups and began to enter nearby buses for their respective trips home. But even that day added a level of import to the debate. While it had been a day without incident or police conflict in Washington, Baghdad saw another bloody day in a seemingly unending sequence of bloody days.

According to Sunday's New York Times, two car bombs went off one after another in a Shiite neighborhood on Saturday, killing 15 and wounding 55, and three American soldiers were killed north of Baghdad that same day when a roadside bomb blew apart their vehicle.

(editorial@citypaper.net)

 

All reader comments are subject to our Terms of Use. By clicking Post Comment, you acknowledge that you have reviewed and agree to these Terms.

Name	please enter your name
Email (will not be published)	please enter a valid email
URL	please enter a valid url
Comment	please enter a comment
Enter the security code on the right in the textbox below.
Security Code	please enter the code
	Join the City Paper Mailing List

The Bell Curve
Jesus Walked
My $35 Worth
The Royal Crush
Frank DiCicco
Where the Money Goes
Ask A Candidate