Why has Iraq turned into a haven for terrorists and a bloody, war ravished nation?

It's the occupation, stupid.

But George W. Bush and a host of other politicians in both the Republican and Democratic parties just don't seem to get it. When asked recently if Vietnam held any lessons for the debate over Iraq, for instance, Bush indicated the lesson was that "we'll succeed unless we quit." Over two million people, including fifty-eight thousand Americans, died in the war in Southeast Asia. Yet the President has the audacity to imply that a lack of will caused us to lose the war.

More alarming than this nonsensical remark by our mentally challenged President, however, are statements by the 2008 Republican Presidential contender, John McCain, that we need to increase our troop level in Iraq in order to establish security and turn the corner in the war. And almost as disturbing as McCain's views are the many Democrats who echo his and others arguments that Donald Rumsfeld's failure to go into Iraq with more troops, or Paul Bremer's disbanding of the Iraq army, or the failure to maintain discipline which led to Abu Gharib and other human rights atrocities in the country, or the corruption of U.S. contractors, or a combination of all these matters is most responsible for our failure to establish a stable pro-American democratic regime in Iraq and the horrifying sectarian war that threatens to spread throughout the region. Of course each of these factors provided fuel for the fire but the basic cause of the escalating violence should be clear to almost everyone by now.

It's the occupation, stupid.

Or perhaps it would be better to say: "the occupations." Until American troops are pulled out of Iraq and Afghanistan and Israeli troops withdrawn from the occupied territories violence in the region is likely to spread. Starting with the French wars in Algeria and Vietnam, history since the end of World War II demonstrates that people in the Third World do not take well to occupying armies bent on laying claim to their resources under the guise of establishing democratic regimes or obtaining some other humanitarian objective.

If Iraq and Palestine haven't brought that lesson home in spades for our representatives in Congress today they should be pointed to Afghanistan. The people of Afghanistan do not want to be ruled by warlords or religious fanatics. But they want even less to be ruled by foreign occupying armies whether the soldiers in those armies wear Soviet, British or American uniforms. That is why we are now witnessing a resurgence of the Taliban in the country. And yet, like Bush's neocon lemmings, leading policymakers in the United States and Britain are calling for additional NATO forces to reinforce the ones already on the ground. If they really think more troops will allow them to achieve their objective of driving the Taliban and Al Qaeda out of the country and into the open they need to learn the lesson of late 20th century occupations. It is not a lack of boots on the ground or tactical decisions of one kind or another that is the major cause of escalating violence in countries where our troops are an unwelcome presence.

It is the occupation, stupid.

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- Roger Burbach is director of the Center for the Study of the Americas based in Berkeley, CA, and co-author with Jim Tarbell of “Imperial Overstretch: George W. Bush and the Hubris of Empire.”

- Paul Cantor is a professor of economics who lives in Norwalk, CT