Quaker Lobby Welcomes Iraq Study Group Report
Next Step is a Firm Timetable for Withdrawal
For Immediate Release - December 6, 2006
The Iraq Study Group Report released Wednesday provides an honest and candid focus on the “grave and deteriorating” situation in Iraq that should help Congress dramatically change U.S. policy from a focus on military victory toward achieving a political settlement, the Friends Committee on National Legislation (Quakers) said today. We hope Congress and the administration will embrace the study group’s call – stated in their first point – for a new diplomatic initiative to be launched before the end of this month.
“We welcome the focus of the study group on promoting U.S. diplomatic engagement with all of Iraq’s neighbors and the clear declaration that the U.S.‘Cannot achieve its goals in the Middle East’ without dealing directly with the Arab-Israeli conflict,” said Joe Volk, Executive Secretary of FCNL today. “But we at FCNL are very concerned with the absence of a firm call for a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. military troops and bases from Iraq. The report leaves open the possibility of the U.S. sending more troops to Iraq, and we believe that would be a mistake, too.” Read more about FCNL's Iraq Peace Campaign.
We at FCNL hope that the Iraq Study Group will help persuade the Congress and the administration to undertake a major change in the direction of U.S. policy toward Iraq that includes an emphasis on talking to all of Iraq’s neighbors – including Iran and Syria. The 63 year old peace lobby added that the emphasis of the report on the importance of “a renewed and sustained commitment by the United States to a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace” should be a cornerstone of all U.S. policy in the region.
But the Quaker peace lobby expressed profound disappointment at the report’s failure to acknowledge clearly that the instability and downward spiral of violence in Iraq is a direct consequence of policy decisions taken in Washington for years of sanctions and for war and occupation. The denial of U.S. responsibility is particularly evident in the section of the executive summary where the author’s call on the U.S. government to reduce economic, political or military support if the Iraqi government fails to achieve milestones in national reconciliation, security, and governance, as if the problem were the Iraqis.
The Iraq Study Group calls for a shift in the focus of U.S. military forces from combat operations to training and working with Iraqi military units. The call for the U.S. to “significantly increase the number of U.S. military personnel, including combat troops, imbedded in and supporting Iraqi Army units” reminds some of us at FCNL of the U.S. tactic of “Vietnamization” during that war in the late 1960s. These efforts did not work then, and they will not work now.
FCNL also is convinced that the civil war will not end in Iraq until the large majority of nationalist insurgent groups are brought back into the political process. The report’s reference to the need for national reconciliation, emphasizing the need especially to bring Sunnis into the political process, and the need to provide for a broad amnesty are important elements to pursue.
On balance, the Iraq Study Group has done a service to the nation in helping to identify some of the elements that could help to redirect U.S. policy in the region. We hope that Congress will take this report as a starting point in moving the U.S. from a military centered approach to an approach centered on a political process advanced by intensive diplomacy. Congress should condition future funding – budget and supplementals – on the administration adopting this new approach.
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The Friends Committee on National Legislation, the oldest registered religious lobby in Washington, is a non-partisan Quaker lobby in the public interest. FCNL works with a nationwide network of tens of thousands of people from every state in the U.S. to advocate for social and economic justice, peace, and good government. For more information: http://www.fcnl.org
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