Over the last two weeks, a new group of citizens and students opposed to the Iraq war have been dispersed among the usual preachers and populists on Library Mall. The group, a loose collection of local progressives, is gathering 16,000 signatures in the hopes of having the question \Should the United States bring all military personnel home from Iraq now?"" placed on a city-wide referendum in April.
Meanwhile, this weekend, Iraqi citizens were voting on their second referendum of the year. This is a strange coincidence. While some Madison residents are asking for a referendum on Iraq, Iraqi citizens are voting in their own referenda. An obvious question emerges from this link: Why can't both Madisonians and Iraqis have this question on their respective referenda. If Madison is using a referendum to ask and answer when the proper time is for U.S. forces to withdraw, why can't Baghdad do the same?
Currently, American forces are most likely to withdraw in two scenarios. The most favorable outcome is that our forces will destroy the insurgency and leave victorious, but this is unlikely to happen anytime in the next two years. The most likely scenario is that the American people will decide they have had enough of Iraq and ask or force the government to withdraw our troops. This cut-and-run approach would leave the country in chaos.
However, if the Iraqi people are allowed to decide the timetable and conditions under which we leave, a third solution becomes possible, that is palatable to both our goals in Iraq and in accord with the growing political consensus that it is time to leave. Researchers Fred Barton, Bathseba Crocker and Craig Cohen from the Center of Strategic and International Studies have outlined a plan that would, in five weeks, ask the Iraqi people in a national referendum if they think foreign forces should withdraw immediately. This would allow the Iraqis ""to debate what the absence of American forces will mean for their families and their nation.""
The referendum should be held every nine months until we get voted out or decide by ourselves to leave. A referendum would allow the Iraqi people to answer the two questions which are foremost in the war debate in both Iraq and America: How do we make Iraq secure? And do foreign forces make Iraq more or less secure?
The Iraqi people are the definitive source when it comes to deciding the necessity of occupation. If coalition forces utilize the perspective of the Iraqi people, any action taken would meet and even validate the current justification of war-democracy in Iraq. This is because if the Iraqi people want us to stay, we have an iron clad mandate for our presence. If, on the other hand, Iraqis vote us out, we suddenly have a tangible exit strategy that makes it easy to argue for an immediate withdrawal. After all, as the plan's authors note, ""There's more honor in being voted out than climbing into helicopters from the roof of the embassy."" This plan would also support much of our war rhetoric and make our intentions seem a little more genuine. This referendum would show that America is serious about empowering Iraqis.
This most obvious objection of the referendum plan is the same objection that those in favor of ""staying the course"" have against immediate withdrawal. That is, a premature departure will create a power vacuum and thereby strengthen the insurgents. But there is nothing to suggest that an insurgency won't ensue whenever we leave. Even if we stay long enough to dampen the insurgency, true stability can only be maintained by Iraqi people's faith in their own government.
Instead of emboldening the insurgency, a referendum could potentially have the opposite effect. This is because a referendum, by removing the occupying forces, could interject legitimacy into Iraq's fledgling republic. There is no better way to demonstrate the power of democracy if the Iraqi people were able to end the occupation with ballots and not bullets.
