Responsibly ending the U.S. military action in Iraq and returning control of the country to the Iraqis is a critical step in enhancing U.S. security. This solution requires that no residual U.S. troops remain in Iraq. The continued presence in Iraq of so-called “residual” forces beyond the minimum needed for standard embassy-protection would be a serious mistake. Any such troops would become a magnet for insurgent attacks and unless they did nothing at all would inevitably become players in Iraq’s domestic political disputes, thus forcing the United States to continue to play referee to Iraq’s civil conflicts. Soldiers tasked with training missions would, to be effective, have to be embedded in Iraqi combat formations necessarily involving them directly in combat, thus continuing to hold American strategic fortunes hostage to events in Iraq that are beyond our control. […]

While the current administration and its allies may seek to portray a return pre-surge troop levels as the beginning of a military withdrawal, it is not enough to reduce troop levels to pre-surge levels. We must end the presence in Iraq of U.S. troops.

– from “A Responsible Plan to End the War in Iraq“(emphases added).

The document was drafted and co-signed by ten candidates for the U.S. House: Darcy Burner (WA-8), Donna Edwards (MD-4), Eric Massa (NY-29), Chellie Pingree (ME-1), Tom Perriello (VA-5), Jared Polis (CO-2), George Fearing (WA-4), Larry Byrnes (FL-14), and Steve Harrison (NY-13), as well as Major General Paul Eaton (ret.), Dr. Lawrence Korb, Brigadier General John Johns (ret.), and Capt. Larry Seaquist (ret.)

The 36 page document is really more a declaration of purpose and a legislative/political plan, not a detailed military withdrawal plan.* It relies on Iraq Study Group timelines and statements of purpose — principally no open-ended troop commitment, a “diplomatic offensive” to secure outside help and guarantees for Iraq, no permanent bases, no goal of domination of Iraqi oil… and also no residual troops in Iraq, which I don’t recall the ISG being quite as explicit about.

Given the narrow confines of the Iraq debate at present, that’s a breakthrough. And the document isn’t just about Iraq; it essentially calls the United States as a whole on the carpet for issues ranging from torture to the blurred boundaries between news media and the administration before the war — often identifying specific pending legislation that might redress those issues. There’s a whole section titled, “Repair damage to constitutional processes and restore transparency and accountability,” recommending legislation restoring habeas corpus, ending signing statements, and ending “supplemental” outside-the-budget war funding. Tantalizingly, the declaration even speaks of holding perpetrators of war crimes responsible:

We should work with the international community to hold perpetrators of potential war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide accountable for their crimes. One way this could be done is by working with the United Nations to establish an independent war crimes commission or a special investigator to gather testimonies and investigate war crimes.

The declaration also, of course, directly challenges Clinton, Obama, and McCain to explain why maintaining even “residual” forces in Iraq is so important to them. I’m struck by how to the point it is — “Current State,” “The Desired End State,” “Proposals for Operations in Iraq,” “Preventing Future Iraqs, ” “Conclusion” … that’s it. About a third of it is devoted to end notes and an appendix listing pending legislation — it’s pretty quick reading.

All of the candidates involved deserve a lot of credit for developing this document. It deserves to be widely read and debated — and both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama should be challenged to adopt it as their own.

(Via Matthew Yglesias. The rollout is apparently happening at the Take Back America conference underway here in DC; here’s a firedoglake post with links to videos from the conference. Naturally, there’s a web site: www.responsibleplan.com.)

=====
CROSSPOSTED from newsrack

* For the details of a military plan to withdraw from Iraq, see “How to Redeploy,” also co-authored by the Center for American Progress’s Lawrence Korb. The page links to the full report, a x page .pdf file. From the introductory web page: “an orderly and safe withdrawal is best achieved over a 10- to 12-month period. Written in consultation with military planners and logistics experts, this report is not intended to serve as a playbook for our military planners but rather as a guide to policymakers and the general public about what is realistically achievable.” The plan is discussed in brief in the ThinkProgress post “The Way Out of Iraq: How to Safely and Orderly Redeploy in a Year;” it did envision leaving two brigades in Iraqi Kurdistan to prevent the outbreak of Turkish-Kurd violence, but otherwise calls for “phased consolidation” of the U.S. military in Iraq from the periphery to the center.

UPDATE, 3/18: I’ve set up an ActBlue fundraising page of my own for the candidates involved — bet they’re all partying now, woo-hoo — adding impeachment advocate Robert Wexler (FL-19) to the list.