FORUM EXPLORES IRAQ WAR
By Rick Malwitz
Staff Writer

New Brunswick Home News Tribune, NJ
Oct 18 2005

Home News Tribune Online 10/18/05

RUTGERS – No matter what form of government is created by the
constitution approved by Iraqi voters over the weekend, do not expect
it to look familiar soon.

“We are not going to install Jeffersonian democracy overnight,”
said U.S. Army veteran Gregg Bumgardner, who joined U.S. Rep. Frank
Pallone, 6th Dist., and Prof. Lloyd C. Gardner at a forum on the war
yesterday at the Student Center.

Listening to the three-man panel were about a 12 students and a
half-dozen members from the community. Based on what the panel had
to say, and questions they were asked, everyone in the room agreed
the United States is committing a major blunder in Iraq.

The most immediate cost is borne by the soldiers, according to
Bumgardner, a Collingswood resident who left the military after
12 years.

“We broke it and we are going to buy it, unfortunately, with the cost
of our troops,” he said.

Bumgardner, who can speak Arabic and Persian Farsi, served in
psychological operations, with the task of providing information to
the local citizens.

“They do not share our world view. They are an Islamic society, and
you are never going to be able to separate Islam from the government,”
said Bumgardner.

He recalled speaking to women prior to an election in January. “I asked
them if they were going to vote. They said, “No, it’s not my place.’ ”

The irony of his observations was not lost on Kay Tsurumi of Highland
Park, a member of the Central Jersey Coalition Against Endless War,
discouraged that the proposed Iraqi constitution does little to protect
the rights of women. “George Bush is the first Christian to establish
an Islamic nation,” she said.

The linkage between religion and the state is not uncommon in the
Middle East. Pallone, the co-chairman of the Congressional Caucus
on Armenian Issues, noted Armenia is 95 percent Christian and that
Armenians “don’t want to separate Christianity from the state.”

Beyond religion, there are other factors Americans find difficult to
understand, said Gardner, who has written 15 books on foreign policy.

He noted how the boundaries of modern Iraq were dictated by the British
at the fall of the Ottoman Empire, who declared: “You are Iraq.”

Gardner noted that the United States, with 172 bases worldwide, is
seen as an occupation force. The United States ought to declare it
will not create permanent bases in Iraq, although he said he did not
believe this is possible. “If they aren’t permanent, we have poured
an awful lot of concrete for no reason,” said Gardner.

Asked if Iraqis would believe the United States if it vowed to
leave Iraq without planting permanent bases, Bumgardner said no:
“They don’t believe anything we tell them.”

He said it’s far easier to get Iraqis to believe rumors, such as a
common rumor that the Americans have imported snipers from Israel.

He said for many Iraqis the greatest challenge is a simple one: Getting
a job to support a family. On some projects, civilian employees have
been brought in from places like Pakistan and Syria, while Iraqis
are on the outside of the fence, looking at foreigners getting paid
for work.

The problem is, said Bumgardner, “nobody trusts the people outside
the wire,” not knowing who is an insurgent and who is not.

Pallone, who said we now have an obligation to mend the broken Iraq,
said his preferred solution is to enlist international organizations –
such as the United Nations and NATO – which formed the broad coalition
that fought the Gulf War in 1991.

“It will dispel the notion that the U.S. is a permanent occupying
force, a theme used by the insurgents to justify their continued
attacks,” said Pallone.

He said that would require the Bush administration to “admit they
were wrong” after embracing a “go-it-alone approach.”

Gardner lamented that so few Rutgers Unviersity students seem
interested in the war. Pallone said the war is not given enough
attention in Washington.

“The hurricane dominated the conversation and the war is no longer
on the front burner,” said Pallone.

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