EPIC to Join Groups Working to Alleviate Crisis at Friday's National Symposium

THIS FRIDAY at Rutgers School of Law in Newark, NJ, EPIC supporters will join Iraq War veteran Kevin Murphy for IRAQ AT THE CROSSROADS. Coming less than two weeks before the Presidential election, this important national gathering will explore one of the greatest humanitarian challenges to be faced by the next President of the United States.

IRAQ AT THE CROSSROADS: Protecting Refugees, Rescuing Our Allies, and Empowering Iraqi Law
A National Symposium at Rutgers School of Law, Newark, NJ
October 24th, 2008 (Friday) 8:30 am – 5:30 pm
Register online via http://www.lawrecord.com

EPIC is proud to announce that National Editor of The Washington Post, Rajiv Chandrasekaran, will deliver the opening keynote address. Speakers will also include Emily Gish of Mercy Corps, Bob Carey of International Rescue Committee, Sam Parker of the U.S. Institute of Peace, Rep. Bill Pascrell, Hilary Ingraham of the U.S. State Department, and others.

In the Last and Final Presidential Debate, Few Mentions of Iraq

Given the global economic crisis, Americans are understandably focused on pocketbook issues close to home. Thus it was not a surprise that the final Presidential debate focused on economic issues. Nevertheless, in an increasingly interconnected world, it's important for the United States to remain responsibly engaged in facing global challenges.

Yet during the full 90 minutes of the last and final debate, the word "Iraq" came up only 7 times, and every time it was Senator John McCain. However, Senator Barrack Obama did use the word "war" once. The following are excerpts capturing the use of these words taken from the full transcript (38 pages).

page 11

MCCAIN: OK. But it's very clear that I have disagreed with the Bush administration. I have disagreed with leaders of my own party. I've got the scars to prove it.

Whether it be bringing climate change to the floor of the Senate for the first time. Whether it be opposition to spending and earmarks, whether it be the issue of torture, whether it be the conduct of the war in Iraq, which I vigorously opposed. Whether it be on fighting the pharmaceutical companies on Medicare prescription drugs, importation. Whether it be fighting for an HMO patient's bill of rights. Whether it be the establishment of the 9/11 Commission.

I have a long record of reform and fighting through on the floor of the United States Senate.

page 15

MCCAIN: Let me just say categorically I'm proud of the people that come to our rallies. Whenever you get a large rally of 10,000, 15,000, 20,000 people, you're going to have some fringe peoples. You know that. And I've -- and we've always said that that's not appropriate.

But to somehow say that group of young women who said "Military wives for McCain" are somehow saying anything derogatory about you, but anything -- and those veterans that wear those hats that say "World War II, Vietnam, Korea, Iraq," I'm not going to stand for people saying that the people that come to my rallies are anything but the most dedicated, patriotic men and women that are in this nation and they're great citizens.

page 19 & 20

MCCAIN: I think that Joe Biden is qualified in many respects. But I do point out that he's been wrong on many foreign policy and national security issues, which is supposed to be his strength.

He voted against the first Gulf War. He voted against it and, obviously, we had to take Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait or it would've threatened the Middle Eastern world supply.

In Iraq, he had this cockamamie idea about dividing Iraq into three countries. We're seeing Iraq united as Iraqis, tough, hard, but we're seeing them. We're now about to have an agreement for status of forces in Iraq coming up.

There are several issues in which, frankly, Joe Biden and I open and honestly disagreed on national security policy, and he's been wrong on a number of the major ones...

page 15 & 16

OBAMA: ...What I think is most important is that we recognize that to solve the key problems that we're facing, if we're going to solve two wars, the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, if we can -- if we're going to focus on lifting wages that have declined over the last eight years and create jobs here in America, then Democrats, independents and Republicans, we're going to have to be able to work together.

In the Next Obama-McCain Debate, Who Will Speak Up for Millions of Vulnerable Iraqis?

Here at EPIC we're disappointed but not surprised that we didn't hear Tom Brokaw ask a question about the humanitarian crisis facing millions of Iraqis. Given the global economic crisis, Americans are understandably focused on pocketbook issues close to home.

But in an increasingly interconnected world, it's important for the United States to be responsibly engaged in facing global challenges, especially challenges that we helped create.

Since the U.S. invasion of Iraq, millions of Iraqis have been forced to flee their homes. Years of violence, economic dislocation, and failures in the delivery of essential services have left 17 million Iraqis without reliable access to drinkable water. More than 4 million Iraqis live in fear of hunger. While security has improved significantly over the past year, the vast majority of Iraqi refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) are staying put. With their own safety or that of their families in mind, they worry about the sustainability of recent security gains. For those who fled direct threats of persecution, they fear any return as long as their persecutor remains free.

Dear friends, we think it's time we had a broader conversation about Iraq. A conversation that goes beyond shallow, partisan questions like "Did the surge work or not?" There are additional questions that the candidates ought to answer: How will you help millions of Iraqis affected by a conflict that we helped create? Will you increase U.S. admissions of vulnerable Iraqi refugees? Will you strengthen humanitarian assistance to the region? Are you committed to supporting Iraq's peace and development?

We need to take these questions directly to the candidates.

In one week, Barack Obama and John McCain will square up for one last debate. Here’s your chance to ask them questions about our issues and to offer the answers you'd like to hear. If you keep your submission to a paragraph or less, you increase your chances of reaching a senior communications adviser or even one of the candidate.

Send your questions and talking points to each candidate via their websites:

Barack Obama | John McCain

Here's a sample from yours truly: Americans and Iraqis are interconnected by events over the past five and a half years. It's not enough to say you support "victory" or "ending the war" in Iraq, we want to know what you plan to do -- specifically -- to help millions of Iraqis who desperately need humanitarian relief and protection. In addition, what do you see as America's moral and international obligation to the people of Iraq?

Photo caption: Kurdish refugee camp in northern Iraq. Jasper Young/Panos Pictures

EPIC Guest Blogger: Reidar Visser Offers a History Lesson for Senator Obama

Reidar Visser is research fellow at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs with a background in history and comparative politics (University of Bergen) and a doctorate in Middle Eastern studies (University of Oxford). He's the author of Basra, the Failed Gulf State: Separatism and Nationalism in Southern Iraq (Lit Verlag, 2006) and co-editor of An Iraq of Its Regions: Cornerstones of a Federal Democracy? (Columbia University Press, 2007). The following commentary was originally posted at http://www.historiae.org/

Senator Barack Obama to Senator John McCain during last Friday’s presidential debate: “You said that there was no history of violence between Shiite and Sunni. And you were wrong.”

Since this is forceful claim about Iraqi history which was presented during a contest for the position as the world’s most powerful leader, it is worth examining in some further detail. Let’s take a closer look at that “history of violence between Shiite and Sunni” in Iraq. Shiites and Sunnis have coexisted in Iraq since they crystallised as two distinctive religious communities in Baghdad in the tenth century AD, when the struggle for power between various factions of the Islamic caliphate that had been going on since the seventh century became transformed into a theological one with the (Shiite) doctrine of the imamate. In the subsequent centuries, there was certainly tension between these two communities at times (not least because the rivalling ruling elements of the caliphates chose to cultivate links with particular communities to further their own power struggles), but outbreaks of violence on a large scale were extremely rare. In fact, not more than three cases stand out before the late twentieth century, and these were all related to invasion by foreign forces rather than to internal sectarian struggles between the Iraqis.

The first major case of extensive Shiite–Sunni violence was in 1508: A massacre by invading Persian Safavids of Sunnis and Christians in Baghdad. The Safavids returned a little more than one hundred years later, in 1623, and once more went ahead with a massacre of Sunnis in Baghdad. Later, in the nineteenth century, extremist Sunni Wahhabis from the Arabian Peninsula would regularly overrun the settled areas of Iraq; on one occasion, in 1801, this took on a clearly sectarian nature as Bedouin warriors massacred Shiites in the holy city of Karbala. The list can be completed down to 2003 and the US invasion with a series of ugly episodes that took place in the late twentieth century: Between 1969 and 1971, the Sunni-dominated Baathist regime performed mass expulsions of Shiites (including a high number of Fayli Kurds); in 1980 there was another wave of mass deportations of Shiites in the wake of the Iranian revolution; finally, in 1991 there were massacres of Shiites after the failed intifada that followed the Gulf War. (Conversely, some of the other historical episodes that are occasionally described as instances of “sectarian violence” simply do not fit this label. For example, the conflict between the government and the mostly Shiite tribes on the Euphrates in the 1935 was interwoven with questions relating to agrarian issues and conscription, and Sunni politicians had ties to both the government and the opposition camps.)

On the one hand, there can be no doubt that this is a grim record: it involves thousands of innocent people who were massacred simply because they belonged to the wrong sect. On the other hand, however, it is important to keep things in perspective. These six cases of widespread sectarian violence took place in a time span of more than 1,000 years. Moreover, they were mostly instigated by foreign invaders. The Iraqis themselves repeatedly closed ranks against these aggressions, uniting Shiites and Sunnis against the foreign forces. For example, in 1623 when the Safavid army was about to massacre the Sunni population of Baghdad, Shiites of Karbala intervened to save Sunnis from Shiite aggression. Similarly, in 1801, when Sunni Wahhabis sacked Karbala, the Sunni pasha of Baghdad punished the Sunni governor of Karbala for having failed to prevent the attack on the Shiites. Also, in none of these cases did the victims propose separative solutions. Never in Iraqi history has there been any call for a small Sunni state. And with the exception of feeble and short-lived attempt by some low-ranking clerics and notables of Baghdad in 1927, the Shiites have also consistently shied away from a call for a small Shiite breakaway state. None of the major upheavals of twentieth-century Iraqi history – 1920 and 1958 – featured sectarian conflict as the main mode of political action.

The accumulation of cases of sectarian violence during the decades of Baathist rule calls for special comment. True, the measures taken against the Shiites in the early 1980s and in 1991 were extremely repressive, and in a one-off episode in the immediate wake of the 1991 uprising they turned into fully-fledged explicit sectarianism through a series of chauvinist Sunni editorials in the Thawra newspaper in which the Arabness of the Shiites was questioned. However, subsequent developments in Iraqi politics show that the “Sunni” character of the Baathist regime was not its real core and that it was first and foremost an authoritarian regime built on relations between patrons and clients: In the mid-1990s the dominant political trend in Iraq was intra-Sunni struggles, as tribe after tribe challenged Saddam Hussein, who ended up executing people from his hometown Tikrit and his own family. When the defector Husayn Kamil Hasan al-Majid returned from Jordan in 1996, he was put to death just like many Shiite rebels had been after the 1991 uprising.

Perhaps most importantly in the context of the US elections, this record needs to be compared with that of the country Barack Obama represents himself. Did not the Civil War cause some 600,000 deaths between 1861 and 1865? How many thousands of African Americans have been killed in KKK violence? What about the Native Americans? The numbers here are clearly higher than the number of deaths caused by sectarian violence in Iraq, and yet few are prepared to question the viability of the United States as a political project. So where did Senator Obama really want to go with those comments?

There is a problem in Democratic discourse on Iraq that consists of always trying to put the actions of the Bush administration is the worst possible light, even in situations when this forces the Democrats to twist the reality. It seems reasonable to criticise the Iraq War on several grounds: there were no weapons of mass destruction, no al-Qaida link and no 911 relationship, and the unilateral action without a UN mandate created yet another dangerous precedent in international affairs. But Democrats go further than this: they frequently claim that the sectarian problems seen in Iraq since 2003 and especially in the wake of the Samarra bombing in 2006 were a “natural” expression of Iraqi politics, and that the high degree of Iranian influence seen in today’s Iraq is somehow a “natural” phenomenon in a country with a large Shiite population. The argument is that the Bush administration should have known that any tampering with the authoritarian structures of Baathist Iraq would automatically have prompted a civil war with a strong Iranian role among the Shiites. It is also a way of ultimately blaming the Iraqis themselves for all the problems they are currently going through.

This is to ignore the historical record of coexistence between Shiites and Sunnis in Iraq and the fervent anti-Iranian attitudes among large sections of Iraq’s Shiites. Of course, on this latter point, John McCain is off the mark just like Obama: by suggesting that “the consequences of defeat would have been increased Iranian influence” he overlooks the fact that some of America’s best friends in the Maliki government have extremely close ties to Iran and that Iran’s interests so far have been well served by the Republican “victory” project and Washington’s peculiar choice of alliance partners among Iraq’s Shiites. But on the whole, Republicans, to a greater degree than Democrats, at least seem to recognise the historical roots of Iraqi national unity. From the Iraqi point of view it simply seems more dangerous to have a US president who based on some extremely superficial reading pretends to know something about the divide between Sunnis and Shiites than to have one who reportedly is completely ignorant about the subject.

The bottom line is that there is nothing in Iraq’s history that should prevent the country from reverting to its natural role as one of the world’s great nations. Those who try to suggest otherwise either ignore the empirical record or do not care for the well-being of the Iraqi people. It is said that Obama has several top-notch, progressive and knowledgeable advisers who know about all these things, and who are unlikely to look to soft partitionist Joe Biden when it comes to actual policy-making. But unless these voices can have a real impact on what their candidate says in front of millions of Americans in prime-time televised debates, their usefulness seems unclear. If yesterday’s unfounded attack on Iraq's record of coexistence is the most inspirational thing Obama can come up with on Iraq then it is hard for a non-American observer to see any fundamental difference between his candidacy and that of all the others before him. Obama's remarks were yet another example of how American politicians can be careless in dealing with other sovereign nations and their histories, and they also go in exactly the wrong direction at a time when politics in Iraq is once more becoming more cross-sectarian.

Photo caption: Al Kadhemain Mosque, Baghdad 2003, photo by Jan Oberg

Is Honesty on Iraq as Elusive as The Great Pumpkin?

Today's Washington Post editorial once again challenges Democratic Presidential nominee Barack Obama to update his Iraq position. While EPIC takes no position on candidates running for political office, we have a lot to say about the policy prescriptions (or lack thereof) of both the Republican and Democratic nominees. Where one party seems to be blind to U.S. shortcomings in Iraq and the region, the other seems to be blind to any progress.

What progress you ask?!

Yesterday EPIC Guest Blogger Reidar Visser wrote about the successful passage of a special election law in Iraq, which opens the door for next year’s provincial elections. Today the editors of the Washington Post write:

Iraq's parliament on Wednesday took another major step toward political stabilization. By a unanimous vote, the national legislature approved a plan for local elections in 14 of 18 provinces by early next year -- clearing the way for a new, more representative and more secular wave of politicians to take office. The legislation eliminates the party slate system that allowed religious authorities to dominate Iraq's previous elections, and it provides for women to hold 25 percent of seats. Most important, it will allow Sunni leaders who boycotted the 2005 provincial elections -- and who have since allied themselves with U.S. forces against al-Qaeda in Iraq -- to compete for political power in the provinces that were once the heartland of the insurgency.

While the U.S. media exaggerates Baghdad gridlock and sectarian politics in Iraq, in truth, the real contest for power in Iraq (as put forward by Sam Parker of USIP and other respected Iraq specialists) is between the powers that be (PTB) and the powers that aren’t (PTA). The passage of a special election law not only shows progress in negotiations between the rival factions of the PTB, but the growing political power and influence of the PTA. Unrepresented communities like Iraq’s tribal leaders (both Sunni and Shia), secular Iraqi professionals in Iraq’s urban centers, many Iraqis in rural areas, and minority communities such as Iraq's Chaldean and Assyrian Christians are demanding free and fair elections that give them a competitive chance of winning seats on Provincial Councils and eventually in the National Parliament.

Real representation from the grassroots up trumping sectarian (read: partisan) party lists and political insiders (dominated by former political exiles in the case of Iraq)? That’s change that both Americans and Iraqis can believe in.

At the same time, we’re all looking for more intellectual honesty and less knee-jerk partisan rhetoric. The McCain-Palin camp ought to offer more “straight talk” about U.S. shortcomings in Iraq and the region (especially surrounding the displacement and vulnerability of millions of Iraqis). The Obama-Biden ticket ought to explain how their administration will withdraw U.S. forces in a way that leaves sustainable security and continuing political progress behind, and it's hard to do that without being honest and forthcoming about where U.S. efforts have done some good. The first candidate who breaks out of the partisan framing of the “Iraq issue” will be the first to look truly Presidential in the eyes of thoughtful American voters.

So here’s the hard-to-swallow pill that the Washington Post prescribes to Obama:

...it's now clear that the political progress that the Bush administration hoped would follow the surge of U.S. forces in Iraq has finally begun. How can the next president preserve that momentum? Democrat Barack Obama continues to argue that only the systematic withdrawal of U.S. combat units will force Iraqi leaders to compromise. Yet the empirical evidence of the past year suggests the opposite: that only the greater security produced and guaranteed by American troops allows a political environment in which legislative deals and free elections are feasible.

Indeed, it’s time for both sides to reckon with the realities of Iraq no matter how inconvenient to old partisan narratives. Do that and you’ll be offering change we all can believe in.

Why McCain Needs a New Plan

Last month, we challenged Senator Barack Obama to update his Iraq policy position. Today we turn our attention to Senator John McCain.

Since the 2003 U.S. invasion, McCain has been a critic of the Bush administration's handling of the war in Iraq. McCain questioned U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's decision to deploy too few troops to win the peace, later calling him "one of the worst secretaries of defense in history." McCain condemned the U.S. treatment of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib and worked to strengthen U.S. prohibitions on torture. When sectarian violence skyrocketed following the February 2006 Samarra bombing, McCain again called for an increase in troops. After Rumsfeld's resignation, President Bush finally came around to McCain's view, announcing the deployment of 20,000 additional U.S. troops as part of his "surge" strategy.

While McCain has established his credibility on military issues, many of the challenges facing Iraq today require progress on the civilian side. Gen. David Petraeus got it right when he testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee early last year: "Some of the members of this committee have observed that there is no military solution to the problems of Iraq. They are correct. Ultimate success in Iraq will be determined by actions in the Iraqi political and economic arenas."

The estimated unemployment rate in Iraq is between 35 and 50 percent. By comparison, when U.S. unemployment hit 25 percent during the Great Depression, FDR declared a national emergency, establishing the Works Progress Administration to rapidly put people back to work. High unemployment can lead to civil unrest, poverty, and crime. In Iraq, it has been a major source of instability, making it easier for criminal gangs, insurgents, and militias to find recruits. As both military and civilian experts note, sustainable security requires sustainable job creation.

Sustainable security will also require an aggressive diplomatic effort in the region as proposed by the Iraq Study Group report. Instead, McCain's website proposes that the United States “bolster its regional military posture to make clear to Iran our determination to protect our forces and deter further Iranian intervention.” Yet a military deterrence-based strategy can only go so far and suggests an ongoing heavy troop commitment that is neither sustainable, nor in our best interest. McCain ought to reconsider the value of American diplomacy and peace-building, as recommended by former Secretary of State James Baker and former U.S. Representative Lee Hamilton.

McCain would further distinguish himself from President Bush by saying two words: "Iraqi refugees." To this day, neither Bush nor McCain have publicly acknowledged the humanitarian crisis facing millions of Iraqis. McCain's campaign website makes no mention of how he will respond to the needs of more than 2 million Iraqi refugees (the second largest refugee population in the world) and another 2.8 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Iraq. Nor has McCain offered a plan to help more than 17 million Iraqis who do not have reliable access to clean water or the 4 million Iraqis who live in hunger or fear of starvation.

Freelance journalist Hanna Ingber Win writes: "While McCain has put the Iraq War at the center of his campaign, he studiously avoids any real discussion of the humanitarian crisis. His campaign has denied repeated requests for an interview on this topic."

Bush's former chief speechwriter Michael Gerson advises ending the silence. He writes: “Helping Iraqi refugees on a larger scale is not an embarrassing necessity [for the administration]. It is an opportunity to show consistency, humanitarian concern and constructive, long-term engagement in the Middle East.”

It's time for McCain to break his silence about the plight of Iraqi refugees, and start a conversation with the American people about how the United States can re-balance its policy in Iraq through effective diplomacy, development and peace-building.

Here at EPIC, we will continue to challenge both candidates to do much better.

Photo Caption: Senator John McCain gives a thumbs-up to his supporters. USA Today

Why Obama Needs a New Plan

In our July 3rd post we wrote about the long overdue need for Senator Barack Obama and the Democrats to update their Iraq policy position. We included excerpts from two recent essays by George Packer and Fareed Zakaria.

Today the editors of the Washington Post joined the chorus: “BARACK OBAMA has taken a small but important step toward adjusting his outdated position on Iraq to the military and strategic realities of the war he may inherit.”

Of course not everyone agrees on the refinement of Obama’s Iraq plan. We received this eloquent comment from John: “…the antiwar crowd who formed the basis of Obama's successful primary coalition is pretty dismayed by what also appears to them as a cynical move and a betrayal for political gain.”

Here at the Education for Peace in Iraq Center (EPIC) we believe Obama’s move is not a departure from his commitment to end the war. Instead we see it as a sign that Obama is finally recognizing the inconvenient truth about Iraq. In short, removing U.S. forces from Iraq would not end the war, and if done rapidly on an arbitrary timetable, could reverse whatever gains have been made over the past year. For Obama (and McCain) to show a true commitment to ‘ending the war’, they must offer a plan for drawing down U.S. forces in a way that supports a free and secure Iraq.

During the primaries, Obama’s “rapid withdrawal” plan (or “best case scenario plan” as Samantha Power rightly put it) sounded a lot like the plan offered by Rep. John Murtha two years ago. The following is our critique of Rep. Murtha’s plan for rapid withdrawal, originally posted on December 8, 2006:

At a December 7th Capital Hill press conference, Rep. "Jack" Murtha (D-PA) said we should rapidly pull U.S. forces out of Iraq and "...redeploy to the periphery, to Kuwait, to Okinawa, and if there's a terrorist activity that affects our allies or affects the United States' national security, we can then go back in."

Rather than offering a peaceful resolution to the war, Rep. Murtha offers a hawkish "containment policy" that risks prolonging the conflict, destabilizing the region, and escalating political violence, resulting in a far bloodier U.S. military intervention down the road.

While Murtha's assessment of the U.S. military and its needs are spot on, he fails to understand what the U.S. war in Iraq has set into motion. The prospect of a Shi'a-dominated Iraq alarms regional Sunni Arab leaders and many Sunni Muslims, and that is part of what is fueling the insurgency and the recruitment of foreign jihadists. If left unresolved, prolonged sectarian violence will ignite a major civil war with regional powers taking sides (much like we saw during the 1980s Iran-Iraq war). Murtha dismisses that danger as 1) already happening, and 2) not our problem. Here's his statement:

"I'm not talking about going back in if there's civil war, because we're in a civil war right now. We're caught in between a civil war right now. "

On both counts, he is partly correct. Yes: for some Iraqi militia and insurgent groups, the country is already in a state of civil war. And yes: the U.S. should not escalate Iraq's civil war by choosing sides. But that does not mean that U.S. forces should simply pull out. Doing so before Iraq can establish its own governance and security would create a much larger, far bloodier civil war. And the resulting power vacuum would more than likely pull competing regional powers into the conflict

Like John Murtha's plan, Senator Barack Obama's vision for drawing down U.S. troops within 16 months of his inauguration (2 combat brigades per month) resonates strongly with many Americans. Yet unlike Murtha, Obama pledges to do so in a way that leaves stability behind. However, the question remains: how?

Obama's campaign website outlines a plan for ending the war in Iraq by re-balancing U.S. policy through effective diplomacy, humanitarian relief, development and peace-building. His website includes this about Iraq's humanitarian crisis:

Barack Obama believes that America has both a moral obligation and a responsibility for security that demands we confront Iraq’s humanitarian crisis—more than five million Iraqis are refugees or are displaced inside their own country. Obama will form an international working group to address this crisis. He will provide at least $2 billion to expand services to Iraqi refugees in neighboring countries, and ensure that Iraqis inside their own country can find sanctuary.

In contrast, as of this date, McCain's campaign website makes no mention of Iraq's humanitarian crisis.

Committing $2 billion to address the urgent humanitarian needs of vulnerable Iraqis, including millions who have fled violence, is a good start. But to translate his vision into a reality he must go further to answer the question of "how?" Here at EPIC, we plan to challenge both candidates to do much better.

Photo Caption: Barack Obama speaks about Iraq. AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall