A group of University of Wisconsin students called for the withdrawal of troops from Iraq and drummed up support for the Iraqi Student Project at a discussion forum Monday.
CAN members solicited support for the Iraqi Student Project, which will be on the ballot in today’s Associated Students of Madison elections.
The ISP would add $1 to each student’s tuition to provide full-tuition scholarships to bring five Iraqi students to UW. If passed with student support, the project would then be presented to the UW System Board of Regents, who has the power to create a tuition differential.
About 30 students attended the forum hosted by the Campus Antiwar Network.
UW freshman Huda Bashir said she was concerned about what would happen to minority groups in Iraq if the United States withdraws all of its troops.
CAN member and UW graduate student Paul Heideman said U.S. occupation can only hurt the citizens of Iraq, no matter what group they belong to.
“If you tell people, ‘I’m for troops pulling out,’ they say immediately, ‘What’s going to happen if troops leave? Heideman said. “The question I like to ask is, ‘What’s going to happen if they stay?
CAN member Todd Dennis, also a former member of the U.S. Navy, said the immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq is important because the military is only harming the nation, and there is no chance of victory for the United States there.
“The occupation is a crime, and you can’t win a crime,” Dennis said.
Bashir, however, said she was concerned the U.S. has destabilized Iraq enough that the nation would not be able to protect its minorities from persecution.
“The country’s so divided now that if we were to give power to the Iraqi people, I feel like the Kurds and the Sunnis would get the short end of the stick,” Bashir said.
According to Dennis, the U.S. troops are only causing more pain and persecution for Iraq citizens the longer they are there.
CAN member Sam Stevenson also said the war in Iraq has hurt the U.S. economy and caused oil prices to rise, adding the war has cost more than twice what the worst predictions had estimated.
