Rabbi Arthur Waskow’s Shalom Center is circulating a stirring call to end the war in Iraq: “WHAT BETTER TIME THAN PASSOVER TO BEGIN THE EXODUS FROM IRAQ? – A JEWISH CALL TO END THE WAR BY 9/11.”
What makes this issue difficult for me is not that the US should never have invaded Iraq in the first place, that one is easy. It’s that the war is no longer primarily about the US being there.
If we left Iraq immediately, would this stop the sectarian warfare that is taking hundreds of lives each week? We honestly don’t know if withdrawing US troops at this point would dampen down the violence or the opposite. My impression is that a US presence in parts of Baghdad actually saves Sunni lives; and this is what many Sunnis believe. The irony of this is monumental, considering that we invaded to end a Sunni-dominated tyranny and have empowered a Shiite-dominated government today.
Maybe there’s nothing better for our forces to do than to get out of the way and let the Sunnis and Shiites fight it out to a bloody mutual exhaustion. But this is not exactly a pro-peace or progressive perspective. My frustration is that there is no obviously humane or correct answer to this conundrum.
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