Last Wednesday night, Bush announced “a new course in Iraq” in a special address to the nation. Far from any kind of troop withdrawal, however, Bush’s new plan calls for a “surge” of over 20,000 U.S. troops to join the 130,000 already in Iraq.

As usual, Bush is completely out of touch with the American people. The war is growing more unpopular by the day, with Bush’s approval rating hitting a new low after he announced his new proposal.

Meanwhile, the situation in Iraq continues to become bloodier by the day. According to UN estimates, 3,700 died in the month of October alone. The number of U.S. casualties recently topped 3,000, not including the tens of thousands who have been wounded.

A recent study by Johns Hopkins researchers estimates that more than 655,000 Iraqis have died since the U.S. invaded in March 2003. CounterPunch contributor Mike Ferner notes that “comparable casualties in our country would mean that every person in Atlanta, Denver, Boston, Seattle, Milwaukee, Fort Worth, Baltimore, San Francisco, Dallas and Philadelphia would be dead. Every. Single. Person.”

Thus, we must question what would be accomplished by adding more troops. Proponents of the plan contend that this is the way to win the war. But what does winning the war even mean? To proponents of Bush’s troop surge, it means the long-term occupation of Iraq, followed by a U.S.-friendly regime, in order to ensure domination over the resource-rich strategic location. This does not mean democracy for the Iraqi people. Centuries of history have taught us that democracy cannot be imposed by the barrel of a gun.

Given the horrendous toll that U.S. forces have inflicted on the people of Iraq, it is not just this new surge we should be rejecting. We should be withdrawing all troops from Iraq now.

Although most Americans are dissatisfied with the current situation, some find the position of immediate withdrawal too extreme. Instead they propose milder measures, such as a timetable for a phased withdrawal. While these proposals are often well intentioned, they should be rejected by anyone concerned with the well-being of either the Iraqi people or the U.S. soldiers occupying their country.

The Bush Administration has invented many reasons for keeping troops in Iraq, most of which are no longer credible to the majority of Americans — bringing democracy to Iraq, preventing terrorism, making the world a safer place, etc. Yet many of those who oppose the war in Iraq still believe that there are reasons to keep the U.S. there for at least some time to come.

One oft-cited concern about removing all troops from Iraq immediately is that doing so will ignite a civil war. Unfortunately, a civil war is already raging in Iraq, and the U.S. presence has done much to fan its flames. According to Anthony Arnove, author of Iraq: The Logic of Withdrawal, “occupation authorities are deliberately pitting Kurds against Arabs, Shi’a against Sunni, and faction against faction to influence the character of the future government, following a classic divide-and-rule strategy.”

In fact, Sunni or Shi’a was not the cornerstone of Iraqis’ identity when the U.S. invaded. As Middle-Eastern scholar Phyllis Bennis explains, “the shift in primary identity from “Iraqi” to “Sunni” or “Shi’a” … happened largely in response to the U.S. invasion and occupation; it does not reflect historical identities.” The U.S. has incited these divisions because it is much easier to occupy a country filled with sectarian infighting than to confront a national resistance movement.

“We destroyed Iraq,” said journalist Nir Rosen on Democracy Now. “There was not civil war in Iraq until we got there. And there was no civil war in Iraq, until we took certain steps to pit Sunnis against Shi’as.” No number of new troops in Iraq will do anything to end the civil war. Occupation only foments ethnic strife and increases resistance to the U.S. presence.

Others reject calls for immediate withdrawal because they believe that, having destroyed Iraq, we must rebuild it. Put another way, we have an obligation to the people of Iraq for the damage and terror we have inflicted over the past four years. The truth is, however, that we are doing little to fix that which we have destroyed. The companies working on reconstruction in Iraq are in many ways looting the country. In a nation with the second largest oil reserves in the world, oil is now being imported by these companies at elevated prices. Much of the infrastructure, including hospitals and schools, has not yet been rebuilt.

It is absurd to think that those who have destroyed this country will be able to rebuild it successfully. The U.S. has terrorized Iraq for more than a decade. The U.S. first invaded the country in 1991 under the mandate of protecting the region from a tyrannical dictator. The U.S. abandoned the people of Iraq, however, when they rose up against the regime after the war, leaving them to be slaughtered by Saddam. The U.S. then imposed more than ten years of harsh sanctions and periodic bombing, resulting in the deaths of more than one million Iraqi civilians.

The war that began in 2003 is simply a continuation of this policy of terror. It is the Iraqi people who will be the ones to rebuild Iraq. The U.S. certainly does have an obligation to Iraq for the destruction it has caused. But this should come in the form of reparations, not continued occupation.

Every day U.S. troops remain in Iraq is a day of continued occupation, oppression and violence for the Iraqi people. We must reject anything short of immediate withdrawal by going to D.C. this Saturday to proclaim, “Troops Out Now! Iraq For Iraqis!”

Laura Taylor is a senior in the School of Industrial and Labor Relations. She can be contacted at lat34@cornell.edu. Kind of a Big Deal appears Tuesdays.