A New York-based non-profit stepped up a petition drive Tuesday aimed at pushing the Bush administration to engage the international community to bring peace to Iraq.

The organization, Res Publica--whose board includes former Clinton White House Chief of Staff John Podesta, Moveon.org founder Eli Pariser, and British Parliamentarian Clare Short--has already gathered 47,000 signatures for its petition and is stepping up its efforts with advertisements Tuesday in the Guardian newspaper in England and the Express, a free daily paper owned by the Washington Post.

"The pursuit of a Coalition military victory in Iraq is driving the country to ruin and a vicious civil war," the petition reads. "Thousands of Iraqi civilians are dying every month. The Coalition must accept that there will be no military victory in Iraq, and that it long ago lost the legitimacy necessary to bring peace.

"We call upon the Coalition to accept a larger role for the international community in bringing peace and stability, and to implement a phased withdrawal of all Coalition troops from Iraq," it adds.

Organizers hope to replicate the success of a similar effort launched earlier this year, when 300,000 people from over 150 countries came together to demand a ceasefire during Israel's invasion of Lebanon. Like the petition for an end to hostilities in Lebanon, the Iraq petition has been translated from English into French, Spanish, German and Portuguese.

Res Publica's Ricken Patel told OneWorld the election of a new Congress in the United States, coupled with the dire situation in Iraq, provided "a moment of opportunity for citizens around the world to clearly state that there needs to be a change of direction in Iraq."

"That direction needs to recognize that there is no military solution," he said, "that the international community needs to be empowered, and that the coalition needs withdraw responsibly from Iraq."

The petition drive also comes at a time when the Bush administration appears open to a possible change of course in Iraq. Henry Kissinger, who coordinated diplomacy for Richard Nixon during the Vietnam War, told the BBC this weekend he believes a military victory for the United States is impossible.

"If you mean by clear military victory an Iraqi government that can be established and whose writ runs across the whole country, that gets the civil war under control and sectarian violence under control...I don't believe that is possible," he said. Kissinger has advised the Bush administration during the Iraq war.

A bipartisan commission headed by the president's father's secretary of state James Baker, is expected to release its recommendations soon. One recommendation many observers see as likely is an international conference on the future of Iraq that includes both Syria and Iran.

Res Publica's Patel told OneWorld such ideas don't go far enough.

"There needs to be a political solution," he said. "But the United States and other coalition governments don't have the political will to implement that solution, so only a legitimate international actor like the United Nations can mediate the new political process and that's the type of political intervention that would be right for the international community."

Res Publica's recommendations lay somewhere in the center of the political spectrum, opposing both the Bush administration's policies and a timeline for withdrawal.

That's too little according to an increasing number of observers, among them retired General William Odom, who served as assistant chief of staff for Army intelligence and director of the National Security Agency under President Ronald Reagan.

"Only a withdrawal of all U.S. troops--within six months and with no preconditions--can break the paralysis that enfeebles our diplomacy," he wrote in an op-ed published by the Madison Capital Times. "The greatest obstacles to cutting and running are the psychological inhibitions of our leaders and the public."

"Reality no longer can be avoided," he wrote. "It is beyond U.S. power to prevent sectarian violence in Iraq, the growing influence of Iran throughout the region, the probable spread of Sunni-Shiite strife to neighboring Arab states, the eventual rise to power of the anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr or some other anti-American leader in Baghdad, and the spread of instability beyond Iraq."

James Paul, director of the New York-based Global Policy Forum comes to the same conclusion. "The biggest U.S. military airbase, Camp Anaconda, north of Baghdad, is said to have an airport so large that it's the equivalent of Chicago's O'Hare field. It's operating 24/7 and those aircrafts are not just going up for holiday visits. They're going up attacking ground targets in populated areas.

"This is a very bloody conflict, and for that reason the U.S. occupation has to end before Iraq is going to settle down into something like normalcy."

Related Links
The Res Publica Petition
Study: 600,000-Plus Iraqi Deaths Since Invasion
Iraq Backgrounder from the Council for a Livable World
OneWorld's Latest Coverage on Iraq