Smashing the Iraq piñata

At the "America" literary festival in Paris two weeks ago, the attending writers were invited to the US embassy in the heart of the city. The writers had come from all parts of the North American continent. The guests included Margaret Atwood, Chuck Palahniuk, Kent Haruf, Guillermo Arriaga and 75 others, including myself. The writers were subjected to the sort of scrutiny that tends to accompany any American bureaucratic institution these days: we were greeted by gruff guards, shunted through the towering gate and the metal detector, into the expansive grounds of the grand house near Place de la Concorde.

In the reception room a 'welcome book' was laid open for the writers to sign. Most did, but one chose to sign with the signature: "America Out of Iraq". It was in the same size writing as all the other signatures so it hardly brought attention to itself. At first I thought the gesture plucky, if a little foolhardy, yet it strikes me now that it was a shallow gesture, a failure of etiquette and, indeed, bravery. It is one thing to carry a placard at a rally, or to write an article condemning the fascist policies of the current regime, or perhaps to even stand up to the ambassador, but it is something different to quietly try to deface protocol. It is much like scribbling on the wallpaper.

In the end, the American ambassador, Craig Roberts Stapelton, probably never saw the offending scrawl, nor does he probably care – it's not as if the event was writ large on the American political or literary scene. The vast majority of the writers showed a quiet respect towards him, even though many had an obvious political slant away from the current regime: most would have gladly written "America Out of Iraq" over their hearts.

But, short of placards and soundbites and scribbles, thoughtful calls for American withdrawal from Iraq have been few and far between in recent times.

I recall being at a children's birthday party in New York in 2002 just before the Iraq invasion started. The adults gathered in the corner to talk while the kids battered a hanging piñata. A young right-wing lawyer – not surprisingly a Fox News commentator – said she anticipated a "quick little war" which would help the economy. She was delighted at the way her son was battering the piñata. Now she is the same sort of quasi-intellectual calling for a quick withdrawal of troops. "Out, out, out," is all she can say. She foams at the mouth with indignation, as if she is clawing at the nasty cluster of sweet wrappers strewn at her son's feet.

Yet we can't fly jetliners into stupidity.

One welcome exception to all the blather is the blueprint published this month in the book Out of Iraq by George S McGovern (the UN global ambassador for hunger and the Democratic presidential candidate in 1972), along with professor of history William R Polk.

"Staying in Iraq is not an option," the authors say bluntly. "Polls show that as few as two per cent of Iraqis consider Americans to be liberators. This is the reality of the situation in Iraq. We must acknowledge the Iraqi's right to ask us to leave, and we should set a firm date by which to do so... Withdrawal is not only a political imperative but a strategic requirement."

McGovern and Polk acknowledge that withdrawal is not without financial and emotional consequences but "it is a poor idea to think that we can accomplish in the future what we are failing to accomplish in the present", they say.

The authors call for the temporary services of an international stablisation force, most acceptably drawn from Arab or Muslim countries. "Specifically it should be possible under the aegis of the United Nations to obtain, say, five contingents of 3,000 men each from Morocco, Tunisia and Egypt (and possibly others)." They argue that the overall cost of such a force would be $5.5bn for two years, or three percent of what the war currently costs Americans.

They also urge a compensation and rebuilding plan for Iraq, "as generosity will go a long way toward repairing the damage to the American reputation caused by the war". They call for reparations to Iraqi civilians for lives and properties lost, and also implore the nation "not to forget the young Americans who fought this war, often with meager pay and inadequate equipment". They stress that the US should not go down in history as "yet another invader of the land long referred to as the cradle of civilization".

What McGovern and Polk's plan amounts to is a modern Marshall Plan. It is not a plan without cost or difficulty, but at least it begins to represent a rapprochement on behalf of US public figures desperately seeking a way out of the quagmire.

The Iraq war costs the US people $246m each day, a staggering $10m per hour. That's almost $150,000 per minute. Imagine what could be done with this bounty if it were not for the black hole of war. Now, that's a piñata to truly smash.