24 Wis. Communities Vote for Iraq Pullout

Well, here’s some heartening news … for our enemies on the ground in Iraq.

Thousands of voters turned out in Wisconsin to offer a purely symbolic but heartfelt message: Bring the troops home from Iraq.

By margins overwhelming in some places and narrow in others, voters in 24 of 32 communities approved referendums Tuesday calling for the immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq.

Joy Kenworthy, 78, of Madison, doesn’t mind that the nonbinding referendums have no bearing on federal policy. She was one of more than 24,300 voters in the state capital who gave 68 percent support to a referendum calling for the pullout.

“I thought this war was ill-advised from the moment it started,” she said.

In addition to Madison, those communities supporting the measures included the Milwaukee suburbs of Shorewood and Whitefish Bay, and the western city of La Crosse. Those voting down the measure included the northwestern city of Hayward and the south-central city of Watertown, where 75 percent of voters disapproved.

[…]

Such measures have been passed by city councils and voters in other states, including Vermont, which served as a model for Wisconsin’s effort, said Rachel Friedman, spokeswoman for the Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice.

The group, which helped organize Tuesday’s initiatives, is already looking at ways to take the referendums into more communities. Elected officials can’t ignore the results, especially as the November election season looms, Friedman said.

“They have seven months to listen to us, to the voters and to do the right thing,” she said. “The people have spoken. This is what democracy looks like.”

The morale of soldiers — and their safety — could dip when they hear about such referendums passing, said Bill Richardson, treasurer of Vote No To Cut And Run, a group that opposed the measures.

Perhaps it’s time to change the Wisconsin motto from “Forward” to “Retreat.”

Boots and Sabers‘ Owen, a resident of Wisconsin, played down the referendums as he monitored the results.

Then it hit me, who cares? All but two or three of the communities are tiny communities. Even if 31 out of 32 pass, it still represents an incredibly small percentage of the population – especially when you consider that the turnout is very low. I suspect that the Green Party and anti-war activists who organized this, targeted a bunch of small communities because they knew that it would only take a few hundred votes to win them. That way, at the end of the day, they can claim that 25 out of 32 (or whatever) referenda passed.

Frankly, I’m hesitant to really care much about an orchestrated and obvious PR event.

So, I guess my reaction is…. whatever. It really doesn’t matter all that much. It is not a reflection of public opinion in Wisconsin, much less the country. Furthermore, the referendums are meaningless because Shorewood doesn’t have a say in foreign policy.

Seeing that the referendum received a little over 24,000 votes in Madison, a city of about 220,000 that includes over 40,000 at the fairly liberal University of Wisconsin, I suspect Owen is correct that these results are in no way indicative of the general population of the state.

Still, the message that it sends must some warm fuzzies to any of our enemies that hear the news. No good can come from this, but American blood can.