As we enter the sixth year of the war in Iraq, the longest war in the country's history next to Vietnam, neither George Bush nor any of the major presidential candidates has a plan to end the US presence there. It's worth considering what Vermont can do to bring the war to an end sooner than the Federal government seems likely to do.

By bringing these troops home, and refusing to send any further troops, we could trigger a reaction that could stop the flow of tens of thousands of Guard troops there from other states. Two bills in the legislature would do just that.

The National Guard grew out of the state militias of the early years of the United States, and there is a built-in tension between their state function and federal function. The US Constitution gives Congress the power to call "forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions." A 1933 federal law further ties the National Guard to the federal government; people who enlist in a state national guard unit simultaneously enlist in the US National Guard, which belongs to the Army. The enlistees are considered state Guard members unless and until they are ordered to active federal duty; they return to being state Guard members when their federalized time is over.

Bills before both the House and the Senate in Montpelier note that the Guard was federalized under a very specific set of circumstances in the 2002 Congressional Authorization of Military Force in Iraq (which John McCain and Hillary Clinton voted for, and Barack Obama opposed): "to defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq and enforce all relevant United Nations Security Council Resolutions regarding Iraq." As Ben Scotch, a Montpelier attorney who supports the bills, puts it, "Both of those purposes have either been accomplished or are no longer relevant. There were no weapons of mass destruction; Iraq as a nation is no threat to the United States; and there are no relevant UN resolutions that remain to be enforced."

The bills call on the governor to withdraw state Guard members from Iraq. More important, according to Scotch, the bills "advise the governor that Vermont should not respond to future callups of the Guard unless the governor is given a requisition that is lawful and in force. Of course, if there is such an order, if Congress should change or amend the authorization, that would meet the requirements of the bill. This is not a bill to utterly refuse to send state Guard members to the National Guard... This is a bill requesting that the government follow the law."

A single hearing has been held on the Senate bill, S. 362. The companion House bill, H.746, has not yet received a hearing.

Scotch maintains that Vermont governor Jim Douglas, or any other governor, would be following the law now if he or she refused to send further troops to Iraq. The Vermont bills are only drawing attention to the actual state of the law. Scotch is "virtually certain" that the bill will be introduced in legislatures in other states.

According to the Associated Press, half of Vermont National Guard members have already been sent to the Middle East, and Vermont National Guard Major General Michael Dubie said this last week that he expects a new, "large-scale deployment" to the area within the next two years.

State representative Michael Fisher from Lincoln, sponsor of H. 746, says that the bill is targeted to prevent future deployments of this kind.

Six in ten US citizens want to start bringing troops home from Iraq. Once one state refuses to send Guard members to Iraq, this way of ending a drawn-out, illegal, unsuccessful, and unpopular war could gain steam around the nation. Congress and next president would face some stark choices:

• soldier on in Iraq without the Guard,
• declare war on Iraq anew with a revised authorization of military force (unpopular and unlikely),
• institute a draft or otherwise increase the numbers of non-Guard military troops (unpopular and unlikely), or
• declare victory and go home.

Vermont's legislature can protect our Guard troops from further illegal deployments by asking Jim Douglas to follow the law, and stop sending more troops to Iraq.

UPDATED: Grammatical error fixed.