Iraq:
The Logic of Withdrawal
by Anthony Arnove

From Amazon

Three years into the U.S. occupation of Iraq, the dire predictions of the prewar opposition have proved remarkably prescient, notes activist, writer and editor Arnove (Voices of a People's History of the United States) in this impassioned, categorical argument for immediate withdrawal. But today's broad sentiment against the war—including the opinions of Americans who explicitly align themselves with an antiwar movement—remains deeply divided on the question of pulling U.S. forces out right away. Arnove, whose book title pays homage to historian and colleague Howard Zinn's classic foray into the Vietnam War debate, accordingly offers a point-by-point challenge to the assumptions underlying arguments accepted by war skeptics for supporting (however reluctantly) an increasingly bloody occupation. His clearly written, well-sourced anti-imperialist critique identifies fear, racism, religiosity, hunger for oil and a "civilizing" pretense behind the Bush administration's rhetoric on the Iraq war and places the conflict in a historical, economic, political and ideological context. Arnove's persuasive reasoning and summaries of relevant events (with two eloquent bracketing essays by Zinn) will prove an invaluable resource to antiwar voices, if unlikely to change adamantly prowar minds.

The Logic of Withdrawal
By Anthony Arnove
The eight reasons why leaving Iraq now is the only sensible option.

The U.S. Military has no right ro be in Iraq in the first place. The Bush administration built its case for invading Iraq on a series of deceptions. The war in Iraq was sold on the idea that the United States was preempting a terrorist attack by Iraq. But Iraq posed no threat. The country was disarmed and had overwhelmingly complied with the extremely invasive weapons inspections. In a rare moment of honesty, Vice President Dick Cheney told CNN in March 2001,"I don't believe [Saddam Hussein] is a significant military threat today." As the case for war has crumbled, so has the case for occupation, which also rests on the idea that the United States can violate the sovereignty of the Iraqi people and all the laws of occupation, such as the Hague and Geneva Conventions, which clearly restrict the right of occupying powers to interfere in the internal affairs of an occupied people.

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Out! Now!