Pulling out of Iraq now would be a disaster
This week the American peace protestor, Cindy Sheehan, decamped from outside George Bush's ranch in Texas and began to move to Washington. Over the last few weeks the protest has grown to resemble something from the anti-Vietnam war protests in the sixties as people from all over the country joined her and international film crews watched the demonstration grow.
Cindy Sheehan lost her son Casey to a roadside bomb in Sadr City in Baghdad in April of last year. Soon the number of US soldiers killed in Iraq will reach 2,000, most of them little more than boys who signed up for military service in order to benefit from education grants afterwards.
It is a terrible statistic, especially when you know that very many of them do not believe in what they are doing in Iraq in the first place. Of the dozens of US soldiers I have spoken to in Iraq, I have yet to meet one who liked the place.
Their lives are unbelievably restricted, even when they are not on duty and they have little normal contact with the people of the country. No surprise then that each side has little understanding of the other.
Some join up as young as 17 for a minimum three-year stint. The big draw is the financial packages available afterwards for further education. In the US, university tuition fees are incredibly expensive, about $30,000 a year in most cases. Those who sign up for the military are in no position to pay these fees; almost all of them come from blue collar backgrounds and the only way to third level education is by means of the various GI bills.
The pay, even while on duty in Iraq, is not good. For a basic private it is a little above the Irish minimum wage, and the only concession for duty in Iraq is that they do not have to pay taxes. For many of those who do not see themselves staying in the military, the education grants are the only attraction.
Critics of this system say that it effectively amounts to a draft. While in the Vietnam era, middle class kids could avoid the draft by enrolling in university, in the Iraq era they can avoid the war by simply being able to afford to pay fees. If you want to go to college and can't afford it, the only way in is through the military.
The unfairness of the system should give massive support to Cindy Sheehan's stance, but it doesn't. You would think that all of this along with the dangers, the boredom of being confined to camp, morning, noon and night while not on duty, would lead to an unhappy and discontented force.
But in my experience, that is not the case at all. Every one I met is well motivated and dedicated to the military and especially to their comrades in arms. Every one of them is willing to put their lives on the line for their colleagues and almost all believe they can achieve stability in the country.
Pulling them out now would be a total disaster for Iraq. Even the hundreds of thousands of new police and soldiers trained up in the past two years would be unable to hold Iraq together. A withdrawal along the lines of that advocated by the anti-war protests both in the US and here would hand Iraq over to the militias, the suicide bombers and the beheaders. Already there are signs that a sectarian civil war is brimming under the surface. Should the Americans leave, Iraq will explode in a terrible battle for control, where victories will be counted by the number of massacres of innocent people on either side.
Whatever about the rights and wrongs of starting this war in the first place, surely it is a moral imperative for the US and the rest of us not to abandon the wonderful people in Iraq. It is not less troops they need, but more, multiples of those there already.
Nothing, not the electricity nor the water supply, will improve until the situation is under control. The so-called insurgents are bombing new utility plants as quickly as they can be built, in the knowledge that the lack of supply increases dissatisfaction with the current regime.
The new Iraqi forces will not be able to get control of the situation for many years and a pullout now would inevitably lead to their collapse. The consequences for the ordinary people of the country would be catastrophic and I wonder do the supporters of Cindy Sheehan and the other protestors know or care about that?
Fergal Keane is a reporter on Five-Seven Live on RTÉ Radio 1
See Iraq coverage pages 38-41