Iraq II: Guest Blog on Wisconsin Referendum

Faithful Progressive is a Wisconsin attorney and author who has published more than 100 short-stories, essays and poems in popular and academic literary magazines. He blogs at Faithful Progressive. Here is his guest blog:

On Tuesday, 30 communities in Wisconsin are set have their voice heard heard on the American role in the ongoing war in Iraq. Debate has been heated but civil.

How did it happen that Wisconsin has this question on the ballot in communities than span our long but not wide state? Much of the credit (or blame, depending upon your point of view) must go to the high level of organization of individual groups across the state by the very mature and well-established Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice, which was established in 1991. This umbrella coalition includes many small local groups. This is an important lesson for organizers: you have to do the grunt work of making contacts and establishing networks to have the infrastructure in place when the moment arrives.

The actual language of the 30 ballots differs substantially. In the small northern city of Ladysmith, the ballot question is very similar to Wisconsin Sen. Russell Feingold's call for a deadline and phased withdrawl. It reads as follows:

Be it hereby resolved; That the City of Ladysmith urges the U.S. government to begin the immediate withdrawal of its troops from Iraq starting with the National Guard and reserves, and ending all combat operations and withdrawing all combat troops by the end of 2006.

The Madison ballot provides as follows:

Resolved: The United States should bring all military personnel home from Iraq now.

The differing questions have caused some confusion, and should be considered when interpreting the results. The state's largest newspaper, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, opined:

What if you got to vote for or against war?

That's the premise behind measures on ballots in about 30 Wisconsin communities Tuesday, from Whitefish Bay to Madison. (The city of Milwaukee and Ozaukee County will have measures on November ballots.)

We opposed putting these advisory measures on local ballots because foreign policy is decided elsewhere. But now that the measures exist, we believe voters have an obligation to cast thoughtful votes on them.

We recommend that they vote "yes" on measures that motivate flexible or gradual U.S. withdrawal from Iraq and "no" on any call for immediate withdrawal.

We believe that a gradual withdrawal - or setting a timetable - would tell Iraqis that there is some urgency in forming a government of national unity. It will tell them that this country will not stay indefinitely if Iraqis choose civil and sectarian strife over settling differences through democratic and peaceful means.

Voters, however, should say "no" to any call for immediate withdrawal - what a measure in Madison, the largest city with a war resolution on its Tuesday ballot, asks. Simply, immediate withdrawal will invite immediately widened chaos for Iraq and the entire region.

Yes, such chaos might result anyway, whether the United States stays indefinitely or whether it withdraws gradually. Time, however, allows for Iraqis to form a government of national unity. Such a government offers a chance. It's just that U.S. patience, blood, treasure and time cannot be completely open-ended, what the president's no-cut-and-run strategy suggests it could be.

We urge thoughtfulness on these measures because, we suspect, the passions propelling them stem hugely from lingering anger over the manner in which this country was induced to go to war. The anger is entirely appropriate. But the fact is that, having helped create current circumstances in Iraq by blundering into war and mismanaging it once it started, the U.S. has huge responsibilities remaining to Iraqis.

We do have responsibilities to Iraqis, but that doesn't mean we have to stay in their country indefinitely. We have been there three years already, with no end in sight. The problem with the Journal's argument, and those of the President, is that neither provides any reason to believe that another three years of the status quo will change anything.

A firm deadline would force the Iraqis to get their act together: it is simply absurd that they have spent more than three months forming a government. Meanwhile, American democracy, such as what is happening here in Wisconsin, provides the best hope that the days are numbered for the current wrongheaded no-win, no-lose strategy of the President.