Local Vote Set On Iraq Pullout

When Massachusetts voters go to the polls next Tuesday, many of them will have the chance to vote on whether they support an immediate return of American soldiers from Iraq.

Cambridge will be among 139 cities and towns in Massachusetts to include on its ballots a non-binding proposal which asks state representatives to support a resolution calling for a withdrawal from Iraq.

The text on the ballot will read: “Shall the State Representative from this district be instructed to vote in favor of a resolution calling upon the President and Congress of the United States to end the war in Iraq immediately and bring all United States military forces home from Iraq?”

The initiative came into existence after a number of organizations, including The American Friends Service Committee, Military Families Speak Out, and Veterans for Peace, met last January to coordinate their local efforts against the war on a state-wide scale.

“The best way to support the troops in a war that is based on lies and that is being conducted against the welfare of the country is to bring them home now,” said Paul E. Shannon, a staff member of The American Friends Service Committee.

After the conference in January, members of the organizations across the state began to petition for the ballot initiative in their local communities.

To be included on the election day ballot, a proposal must acquire 200 signatures within the local voting district. Together, the organizations were able to raise enough signatures to have the initiative on the ballot of 36 districts in Massachusetts. In Cambridge, seven of the 33 precincts will be able to vote on it.

“Our goal is to create a dialogue about the war, to encourage a discussion on something we are just kind of letting go on without confronting it,” Shannon said. “Now that it is on the ballot it means that people will hopefully be interested.”

But veterans of Iraq and members of the organization Vets For Freedom, have expressed dismay over the tactics they say the organizations calling for withdrawal are employing.

Erik F. Swabb, a first-year student at Harvard Law School and a member of the Marine Corps who fought in Iraq between September 2004 and March 2005, said that, rather than hosting local public referendums such as the ballot initiative, it would be more fruitful to contact representatives.

“You can have just as much force without making it so public that troops over there have to contend with large chunks of people who simply don’t believe that they should be there,” Swabb said.

The co-founder and Executive Director of Vets for Freedom Wade Zirkle, who is also a veteran of the Iraq war, said that the ballot initiative is not representative of the mainstream U.S. public opinion but of the “fringes of American politics.”

“I don’t think Americans are necessarily satisfied with what is going on in Iraq, but I think that most Americans understand than an immediate withdrawal is going to be detrimental to our national security and our longtime survival as a nation,” Zirkle said.

But Robert Winters, a political observer and editor of the Cambridge Civic Journal, said that he was confident that most Massachusetts voters would agree with the proposal.

“There are some who are opposed to the war who may question just outright withdrawal as the right way to handle it including our elected officials,” Winters said. “But, I think most people will say ‘yeah, get the hell out.’”

However, Winters stressed that the ballot initiative serves mostly as a “feel-good measure” which would have “virtually no effect” on state or national politics.

“I don’t think its going to turn any political minds to a different way of thinking,” Winters said.

Similar proposals will be included on ballots in certain districts of Wisconsin and Illinois.

­—Staff writer Claire M. Guehenno can be reached at guehenno@fas.harvard.edu.