Nader:
Calling for a withdrawal from Iraq
– but not yet!

Sep 27, 2004

In campaign speeches, independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader says that he would withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq ... six months from now.

And after that, what? Replace them with "peace-keeping forces, for a limited duration, from Islamic countries from nearby and neutral countries like Scandinavia, who are used to that sort of task," says the longtime consumer advocate.

Shouldn't the Iraqi people have the right to run their own country themselves? The Iraqi population's growing support for the insurgency stems exactly from the desire to boot a foreign occupier out of their country.

Nader obviously thinks that, somehow, U.S. troops have "unfinished business" in Iraq, to be accomplished in "six months."

And what will happen during those six months? More U.S. bombing, more U.S. killing of civilians, more U.S. destruction of whole neighborhoods and towns, more of the mess that is the total and sole responsibility of the U.S., which has devastated Iraq for the last 13 plus years.

And what if U.S. troops "need more time," say, because not enough of those "peace-keeping forces" are found?

This is what Nader calls a "responsible withdrawal," implying that Iraq would collapse into civil war if the U.S. were to leave right now.

Iraq has already collapsed into a civil war – engulfed in it, precisely because of what the U.S. has done and is doing.

When Nader makes this proposal, he accepts the outrageous proposition that the U.S. has the right (what he calls the "responsibility") to determine for other people what happens in their countries.

For 13 years, the U.S. has been carrying out a war on the Iraqi people – sometimes very openly, sometimes less so, but always very deadly.

Six more months? NO! Not a single day more!

To be against this war means to tell the truth about it – and the first and most important truth is that every single day the U.S. stays, every single day Iraq is occupied, the situation will only grow worse.

Get U.S. troops out of Iraq NOW!