Subscribe to Common Dreams News Updates
Most Popular This Week
Popular content
Today's Top News
Iraq Withdrawal in Danger
Dear Mr. President: Scrap the Military's Contingency Plans for an Extended Stay in Iraq
Just when you thought that the proverbial fat lady was about to launch into an aria over the final withdrawal of US military forces in Iraq, the US military announced that it is drawing up contingency plans to delay the withdrawal.
In an op-ed in today's New York Times, Tom Ricks, author of "Fiasco," argues that the Obama administration should abandon its commitment to pull our military forces out of Iraq and maintain a robust military presence there "for many years to come." He argues that it could be the best way to deter a return to civil war and help Iraq move forward politically. He argues that it could be the best way to deter a return to civil war and help Iraq move forward politically.
Ricks is wrong. And so is the military for drawing up - and publicly announcing - a contingency plan to keep our forces in Iraq. The best way to deter the return to civil war in Iraq is for Iraqi government leaders to realize that they are responsible for their actions and will not be able to look to our men and women in uniform to bail them out. The role of the United States is to abide by its commitment under the Status of Forces Agreement and respect Iraqi sovereignty - not guarantee Iraqi security. An overwhelming majority of Iraqi citizens agree.
The president should order the military to scrap the contingency plans and reaffirm what he told an audience of cheering Marines at Camp Lejune last February: "By August 31, 2010, our combat mission in Iraq will end."
Why is the US military drawing up plans to stay in Iraq after the deadline for its departure passes? Why the second guessing from writers like Ricks? Political instability and increased violence. According to Commanding General Ray Odierno, the military is prepared to scrap the withdrawal plan "if we run into problems."
On its current trajectory, General Odierno can count on Iraq running into "problems." From very early on, President Malaki has run a sectarian Shi'ite regime. Many Sunnis were held in secret prisons and tortured. Few were allowed any significant roles in government or the military. Civil strife intensified and was only reduced when U.S. policy opened to the "Sunni Awakening," put Sunnis on the payroll, and prevailed on Malaki to ratchet down his hostile rhetoric. Now, as the date for U.S. withdrawal draws near, elections loom, and Malaki seeks victory as a nationalist defender of Iraq's independence, he has returned to full-throated sectarianism. The inevitable result is the re-escalation of civil conflict. The U.S. military presence has been and will continue to be Malaki's enabler for as long as our troops remain in his country.
Friends told me last May to calm down when I fretted about whether or not the best laid plans of the Obama administration and the Status of Forces Agreement between Iraq and the United States would actually occur on schedule or even at all. General Odierno had been critical of the plan since the moment it was announced, I worried aloud in a blog post: "When General Odierno was asked earlier this year if all combat forces will, in fact, be removed from Iraqi cities and villages by the end of June of this year, he balked, saying that they can remain if they are joined by Iraqi forces. His comment created a firestorm of protest in the Iraqi parliament."
Ominously, I also cited what Tom Ricks was reporting last May - that there was a "consensus within the military" that U.S. combat operations were only half over in Iraq and that the US will have combat troops fighting there in 2015.
Fast forward to now: President Maliki has intensified his sectarian battle against Iraqi Sunnis by rigging the elimination of the most popular Sunni leaders from the ballot in next month's Parliamentary elections. This was after he betrayed the Sunni "Awakening Councils" who had laid down their arms against US and Iraqi forces in exchange for a pledge to: A) Pay them $300 per month; B) Integrate them into the Iraqi police force; and C) Stop harassing their leadership. The deal was a turning point in the war. What happened? Maliki stopped the payments (he later resumed them after being pressured by the US) and started arresting their leaders. Today less than 5% of the Awakening Councils members have been integrated into the Iraqi police force.
Now he is rigging the election to make sure that his political Sunni rivals literally do not have a chance when Iraqis go to the polls on March 7 to elect a new parliament. The elimination of prominent Iraqi leaders from next month's election was rigged by the very man who duped the Bush administration and played them like a fiddle before and after the US invasion. Remember good ole Ahmed Chalibi? He was the darling of the Bushies who provided so much of the baseless information that was used to publicly justify the invasion. In the "they will welcome us with flowers" phase of the US military occupation, Chalabi was to become installed as Iraq's new western leaning, oil yielding leader. Turns out that Iraqis were not interested in a corrupt con artist running things. He ended up facing criminal charges instead of leading the new Iraq into the future. Ever the quick-change artist and survivor extraordinaire, Chalibi kept his fast and quick hand in the political soup, teaming up with Maliki's man Ali Faisal al-Lami and their Iranian allies over in Tehran in a maneuver that has thrown their Sunni competition off of the ballot. They did it through their leadership of a national institution whose name even George Orwell couldn't have come up with - "The Supreme National Commission for Accountability and Justice." Both Chalibi and Lami will be on next month's ballot as part of the Shiite coalition, the Iraqi National Alliance. Important Sunni opponents will not.
The consequence? The popular Sunni political party, the National Dialogue Front, is pulling out of the elections after their leader, Saleh al-Mutlak, was thrown off the ballot by the Chalabi gang. This is very ominous as Iraq cannot afford for it to be "deja-vu all over again." The last time Sunni Arabs boycotted national elections was in 2005. Those discredited elections were followed by an intensified insurgency, massive bloodshed and a sectarian civil war. As the Washington Post reported yesterday: "The decision by the National Dialogue Front to pull out of the elections could cement views here that Shiite religious parties have rigged the vote against secular and Sunni candidates ...The disqualifications have caused widespread fear that the elections will be deemed illegitimate."
So, where does that put our soldiers in Iraq? Waiting in the wings to see if the contingency plans being drawn up by their superiors put them back on the front lines. And that is both a senseless and an extremely dangerous place for our soldiers to be.
As I wrote last May: "Will there continue to be violence and instability in Iraq as U.S. forces are removed? Yes. But if a secure and peaceful Iraq is the requirement for the removal of U.S. forces, then our forces will be there for a very long time. If, on the other hand, the bottom line is that it is time for Iraqis to take responsibility for Iraq - as 80% of the Iraqi population wants -then the president is right. It is time for U.S. forces to go."
The bottom line for US policy in Iraq must be sovereignty, not security. If Iraqi leaders want to engage in flim-flam political maneuvers that enrage their opponents, alienate millions of Sunnis and ignite a new round of sectarian violence, that is their business. Iraq is their country. But the LAST thing that anyone should be thinking and planning and announcing is that our men and women in uniform might be ordered into harm's way to clean up the mess.
Even the existence of so-called "contingency plans" by the US military sends a dangerous signal that once again our soldiers might be ordered to risk life and limb to bail out bad choices by sectarian Iraqis who hold the reins of power. Mr. President, please order General Odierno to dump his contingency plans and read your orders for the withdrawal of all combat forces from Iraq by the end of August. There should not be a shadow of a doubt that our soldiers are leaving Iraq on schedule.
It's time for the fat lady to tune up and sing!
52 Comments so far
Show All-"Why is the US military drawing up plans to stay in Iraq after the deadline for its departure passes?'
What is this? But Obama promised us? How can this be? Surely the multibillion dollar US bases were never meant to "endure"? Let's be reasonable, if it is merely a matter of the quality of Iraqi democracy, maybe the US could fly Karzai over from Afghanistan to help with the Iraqi elections?
Is Odierno in contempt of the CinC?
Now that we have the "Bloombox" for energy we can pull out of the Middle East
'jlocke123 February 24th, 2010 4:32 pm
-"Why is the US military drawing up plans to stay in Iraq after the deadline for its departure passes?'
Far-flung garrisons leading to Empire. ?
is there maybe one campaign promise this clown can keep? I was never hoodwinked by his branding, but y'all should be ashamed for thinking he'd do right by the people, for the people, just because he was black and used civil rights jargon.
Yes, there are two promises made EARLY in his campaign for Commander in Chief.
He promised to not hesitate to use the military to attack within Pakistan and
he promised to INCREASE the Pentagon budget.
After that, he probably decided that since he was proud to be without conscience,
he might as well say whatever would work at any given time.
He's only Commander in Chief when war is declared, isn't he?
Oh, yeah, jaws are dropping. No one saw this coming. Imagine the shock.
End US imperial occupations in the 21st century in Afghanistan and Iraq. Get the US out of Somalia, Pakistan, Iceland and Yemen.
what's in iceland? besides broke banks, nordic women, and old geysers? progressive minds want to know.
You need something MORE than nordic women?
I think we should simplify this formula:
"Dismantle the Empire. Restore the Republic."
The path to Hell is lined with good intentions.
Mr. Andrews is misguided (to say the least) if he thinks that the United States of Global Domination does not want instability in Iraq. Ahmed Chalibi would have no power if the U.S. wasn't shoving him into power (again). He is being rewarded for helping to create an excuse to start the war of aggression so that the multi-national corporations could suck the life out of Iraq.
The U.S. (and its "coalition") has been lusting after the profits to be made from ALL the resources, mainly oil, in the "Middle-East" for many decades. They do not give a damn about the living (and dying) conditions of any so-called arabs.
Pleading with Obama or the majority of corrupt corporate tools in Washington, who masquerade as "public servants", is similar to spitting into the wind, except that you can be certain they will spit back at you.
There is nothing honorable about why the U.S. started this horror show and there will be nothing honorable about how they will drag it out.
Inveterate, pathological liars started this and will continue it until their owners lose interest. At this point, they are salivating at the smell of money. The military slaughtered hundreds of thousands of innocent people to clear the way for the corporate consumers, who, as of yet, have not really begun to feed.
yes. why don't we get george soros to sponsor ten americans to go to the international criminal court and obtain arrest warrants for dick cheney and john yoo? there may not be jurisdiction because bush struck our nation from the list of signatories to the treaty after clinton had signed an agreement enrolling us as a member of the international criminal court. nonetheless, it would have some value, as its warrants against them would certainly be valid if either of them could be found and served on foriegn soil. perhaps they maight be valid in any event, as the u.s. is a founding member of the united nations and has agreed to abide by its charter, which would be a nullity if it were unenforcable against its members. if the u.n.'s mission and authority is to be taken seriously anywhere, then there must be a forum in which to hold its errant members accountable.
Sioux Rose
JILL: You made the point I intended to make. TOM ENGELHARDT spoke about the permanent nature of the bases being built in Iraq. These were no redi-to-assemble style tent cities, but rather the stuff intended to stand up to the tests of time. Heck, the US is still in Europe and Japan long after the wars were won. Engelhardt deserves credit for ringing this alarm bell a long time ago. People intending to leave do not move millions and millions of dollars of equipment into permanent structures.
The author here also takes the stance that our troops are there delivering some kind of benefit. The society was raped, wrecked, polluted with DU and destroyed; and given the weaknesses of human nature, those left to manage the spoils may experience difficulty in getting along. Prior to the US invasion Sunni and Shite lived side by side for the most part. The war exacerbated their differences; and now the fresh wounds drawn out by those differences are being used as the excuse for American soldiers to stay longer. The war began on a false pretext and remains set to THAT course: one of lies, lies, and more lies.
"I wonder if citizens of the US may lodge a complaint to the UN regarding our own country?"
Why do you think Rockefeller made sure - by donating a prime lot - the UN is situated on US ground, and not as was proposed in long-neutral Switzerland or on territory declared international? - Maybe so the UN could always be tacitly held hostage ("host-age") if complaints were lodged there about the USA?
The Obama/Pentagon regime probably leaked the story to Ricks in order to prepare Americans for something most of us knew a long time ago: we're not getting out of Iraq . . . until the Iraqis throw us out.
Let's remind OBOMBMAMA, that the anti-war movement is still alive and breathing sooty air.
COME TOGETHER: March 20th,2010 Washington,D.C. and in our communities nationwide. We need to "hold his feet to our fire".
There's a persistent Obama-defender at another site who appears like clockwork to offer one definitive bullet-point or another to contest that fundamentally, this not-so-new boss is the same as the old boss.
"Obama is closing Guantamamo!"; "Obama put a stop to US torture!"; "Obama is withdrawing US troops from Iraq!"
Frankly, it's hard to tell if she is really the die-hard Obama apologist she makes herself out to be, or if she's just so aggravated by the rest of us that she feels compelled to hold her ground.
But others find her so aggravating that every time she makes these preposterous claims, myriads of commenters painstakingly present evidence and analysis refuting them. Each time they definitively explain that there is far less to her blanket statements than meet the eye, and that the more clear-cut Obama's statement is, the more certain that the details are infested with a legion of devils.
IMO, even regular visitors are surprisingly patient and civil with her, trying to dislodge her conviction that Obama can be trusted-- and moreover, that what he claims is being done or undone is absolutely reliable.
All for naught. Like a whacked mole, she just pops up from another hole to express her scorn for we of little faith. Even when she concedes that reality has not conformed to her optimistic and credulous views, she offers a stock rationalization invariably blaming third parties-- Rahm, Congress, the Pentagon for derailing Obama's best-laid plans.
She intersperses this with jeers and derision at the fantasy and delusion of expecting "miracles" and instant gratification from the White House.
I describe her to suggest that this article may be helpful to fatuous True Believers like her. But now that I think of it, she'd just dismiss it out of hand-- suggesting, probably, that we blow the wax our of our ears and listen to the Fat Lady's sweet, sweet song.
· Yr Obd't Servant
Sioux Rose
C'mon now O.S. we have a good share of whack-a-moles right here! Why look further? They follow the same M.O. that you described. And long after the most inspired & intelligent of our forum's teachers lay out cases that would out-do an attorney with a 6-figure trial rate... they're back on the same page, as if intelligence never opened THE book to them in the first place.
Quite right, SR. And of course I was not unmindful of the home-grown version.
Contrairiwise, this person would fit right in here.
"Fool me twice, shame on me" remains valid despite Dubya's storied mangling of the expression.
There's an old, old Jules Feiffer cartoon that is still floating around, yellowed and crumbling, in my personal correspondence. I apologize all around for rendering a clumsy paraphrased transposition of the virtuoso original.
It consisted of a series of exchanges between a distraught young woman and an odious young man in the process of breaking up. (Note my personal bias.) The woman says, "You told me you loved me!"; the guy responds, "I told you I CARED about you". After the guy coolly rebuts one or two more reproaches, the woman finally hangs her head, heartbroken, and says, "Just go."
The final panel shows the man, grinning in fist-pumping triumph, exclaiming to himself, "Clean!"
Ouch. Very deft evocation of mundane manunkind; it still stings when I recall it.
IMO, the man in that cartoon is an accurate and reliable template for politicians in general, and certainly the major Elected Misrepresentatives, in direct proportion to the prestige of their office.
I'm well aware that I'm exceptionally skeptical, indeed cynical. So it's understandable that unwary persons of reasonable honesty and good will are initially inclined to take persons, even Elected Misrepresentatives, at their word, and not closely parse the words to discover important incongruities between words and actions.
But once it becomes clear that the words and the deeds don't match, and that easy confidence and trust is misplaced, prudence and healthy skepticism dictate that whenever the Misrepresentative says something that sounds too good to be true, that's because it isn't.
Team Obama is obviously devoted to formulating pseudo-policies to assuage public sentiment while actually maintaining, and even enhancing, the objectionable status quo they ostensibly seek to remedy. They use every kind of tawdry gimmick available to obscure and mollify the citizen audience, e.g. changing the names of things. It is not merely hypocrisy; it's confidence-trickery.
I take for granted that every one of the amoral creeps in charge-- Obama, Holder, Rahm, Clinton, Petraeus, McChrystal-- constantly scheme to ensure that they remain "Clean!", according to their depraved and sordid conception of that state.
· Yr Obd't Servant
Sioux Rose
OBEDIENT: You have such an observant eye and equal gift for language. I like Jules Feiffer a lot. One of my all-time favorite movies is "Little Murders."
There are a few explanations for why people don't get it, when the lip synch doesn't match the words or actions, and they still find reason to believe... here are a few:
1. Their salary depends on them going along
2. They truly believe there IS no alternative to the two-party "system"
3. They want to belong to something, a group outside of themselves and thus identify with a name, concept, or image... substituting for "the real thing."
4. They are not too bright
5. They are here in this forum to get us to waste time spinning in circles trying to provide them with access to the Light of reason
Other?
I finished my tax prep today and need to watch a movie as my "escape." Heck, it's the Pisces phase of the year, the interval most given to dreams, delusions, duality, confronting "the inner dichotomy," and/or escapisms, the film media being one of them. Catch you manana.
The author of this article is:
1. Exceedingly naïve
2. Has other motivations.
Its foolish to think that we'd withdraw our troops from Iraq when there was still black gold in the ground. That's one of the primary reasons that we are there and until its sucked dry, we'll have a strategic interest in the region.
Moreover, the fact that Iran also shares a border with poor Iraq also means that we have and will continue to have a strong military presence there long into the future.
You might as well call for republicans to decamp entirely from the "great" state of Texas. Its just not going to happen.
The author of the opinion piece in the New York, Tom Ricks, suffers from the same delusion that has afflicted many a policy maker, average citizen, & deluded Fox Noise Channel viewer alike: the idea of Iraq as a central unified state (one of the more bad results to come from the aftermath of World War One). Like that other portion of former Ottoman territory with an ethnic and religious hodgepodge that barely tolerated each other in the best of times, Yugoslavia, the sooner Iraq becomes a historical footnote, the better. A continued US presence there merely, at best, delays the inevitable. The days of a centralized despotic regime ruling from Baghdad and exploiting the oil wealth is over with.
So there IS someone out there who thought we - by which I mean, the US Armed Forces and the biggest 'embassy' on Earth - were ever leaving Iraq... before the oil runs out, I mean.
Or if/when Jesus returns...
And it would appear there's no hurry to get said oil out, so...
WTF? We're Not LEAVING!
The United States simply cannot be believed — ever — unless it says it's going to blow something up, that is.
"stay, stay, stay!" title of song and 1983 mtv video by paul mccartny and michael jackson. as karyoked by maliki and talibani to their american guests, karzai's song of the year until 2024, when he says we can finally leave the plains of afghanistan, when his loya jirga can finally pipe the poppy from their fields in peace.
The article did not mention the private contractors in Iraq or the private army Blackwater.The people of Iraq are intelligent educated people at least they were when Saddam was in charge. They had a free education through college for boys and girls. Why did America send private contractors to Iraq when the Iraqi people so desperatly needed jobs? It is not the troops that are harming the civilians now that most of the fighting has stopped. It is the lack of good paying jobs. The Iraqi people are a proud people they never wanted charity or rations during the sanctions . They wanted to work. America would not allow them to work to rebuild their county after the first Gulf War. This is what they need and it was sinful of Bush and Cheney to send Halliburton and other private companies and foreign workers into Iraq to reap the profits of jobs and reconstruction.
yes! great point! highly underpublicized. the war was the first count of international rape, the second count the economic rape of iraq, the latter in violation of the 1907 treaty signed at the hague, in which most nations, including the u.s., agreed to respect the form of the economy of any country they might become militarily occupied.
There are more contractors in Iraq than there are soldiers. For every troop Obama withdraws from Iraq, either he replaces it with a rough guess of 2-4 contractors and at least one of them is bound to be a mercenary. Some of those troops withdrawn from Iraq will go to Afghanistan.
"Why is the US military drawing up plans to stay in Iraq after the deadline for its departure passes? Why the second guessing from writers like Ricks?"
Answer: Just like the NY Times earlier this week ran an op-ed piece by an obscure intelligence analyst accusing Obama and General McChrystal of wimping out on the use of air power to kill civilians in Afghanistan, Rick's more recent op-ed sets up a comparable framing crossfire to pressure the White House into renigging on its public committment to withdraw from Iraq.
The purpose is to keep moving the center of the two-party partisan goal posts another click or two farther to the right. The big boys in the Pentagon (like Gates) smell blood in the water in more ways than one. They know press leaks like this work (remember that leaked request from McChrystal for 40,000 more troops in Afghanistan)?
The Obama White House can be rolled. It's the same technique, used successfully in the past, and very likely to work again.
If the Dems take the bait and renig on withdrawal from Iraq, then they lose a significant slice of their 2008 electoral base (regular Dems and independents fed up with Bush's Iraq fiasco). If however the Dems reject Ricks' call to shelve withdrawal from Iraq on deadline, then Obama's people are neatly set up to be charged with wimping out and stabbing our brave troops in the back when the Iraqi sectarian civil war heats back up again.
The reasons why the US military keeps drawing up contingency plans like this (and the Pentagon keeps leaking them to the mainstream media), are as obvious as the reasons why neoliberals like Thomas Ricks engage in such second guessing: these whipsaw tactics work to prolong the US occupation of Iraq.
Bill from Saginaw
Sioux Rose
BILL: Although you sometimes give too much credence to all the military chatter about strategy when I feel that's mostly smoke and mirrors to hide the true objectives (in the form of resource acquistion). Nonetheless, my friend, the spelling is reneg or reneged as opposed to renig or renigged... that correction was worth relating with all due respect.
Yeah Sioux: I noticed Bill had it spelled wrong too, but I kind of liked the spelling of reneged being renigged. You have to admit it fits BO.
I reneg on the spelling. Thanks.
Bill from Saginaw
Sioux Rose
PAUL: For all of Obama's flaws and profoundly misguided agenda, the "race" card (or element) is precisely the item that ought NOT be played. The play on words here is dangerous, and Bill is intelligent enough to correct his spelling.
Our country is misrepresented by draft dodgers ever since Bill Clinton became president. If Bob Dole, John Kerry, or John Mccain were to be president, our sleepy electorate would be hammering the sitting president for doing the same shit Dubya and Obama are doing but as a former Vietnam War veteran. 17 years of corporatist draft dodgers running the White House has everything to do with both prolonging the occupation and replacing troops with mercenaries.
Nah, the withdrawal from Iraq is going to go ahead. (Of course the contractors will stay, and so will some support units) After all when August rolls around the usa will need another war to ramp up support for the President's party.
Obama will be withdrawing the troops from Iraq, after all they'll be needed when O sends them into Iran.
Forget the "Sunni Awakening" we need an American Awakening.
Of course there will be no pull out in Iraq. There never was any intention of doing so. There will always be some pretext, some excuse to leave 10-20000 US troops and affiliated mercenaries in place to control the colonial government.
In all likelihood, US forces will end up abandoned and far from home in hostile territory, just like the Russian army in Afghanistan.
Except the US forces will not have the option of walking home...
Hi
There is simply nothing left for Obama to cave in to that remains of his Change We Can Believe In.
Surely, surely, surely even the dumb ass American public can see this as it is and start actions to reclaim their republic?
Whoever thought the empire would voluntarily give up land once conquered?
Particularly land sitting on energy resources necessary to continue the empire's lifestyle in the face of the ruinous consequences of the empire's own actions hitting globally, in the form of poison, pollution and depletion of survival resources?
Better the known bad than the unknown, however good the unknown has chances of being. - That is the apparent philosophy of the Corporative Empire which is now stateless and state trancendent.
It's the disease of not letting go of control. Like a monkey caught by hunters by putting a fruit inside a bottle with neck thick enough to get the monkey's hand in, but too thin to get the hand out while clasping the fruit. The empire won't let go of it's fruit. Like the monkey, rather die.
Despair not. Even the evil empire is dependent to continue on people accepting the myths of necessary war. As a global mass awakening to the destructive follies is happening - as it is - the Corporative Empire will be increasingly revealed for what it is: the hollow illusion of an unworkable idea.
Relatively soon we'll see the last general, in service to the last corporate CEO literally or metaphorically holding a gun to his head, hollering: "Feed me more luxury, or I'll shoot!" - and everyone will be too busy taking care of more urgent needs to respond.
Though be prepared to know about and possibly be part of at least hundreds of millions of people dying, as the empty idea exposes itself as dead on arrival. Not a pretty scenario we're headed into. But neither is it pretty now. Already some 10 million people die annually of preventable starvation. Collectively we're not nice.
We should get our hubris under control sooner rather than later. Our choice.
The so-called "seven sisters of oil" actually prefer to negotiate deals with governments of countries that are not occupied by us. They have learned some lessons from the disastrous Shah-era of Iran. Are the oil companies angels? Of course they are not and I am not defending them here but they are realistic enough to know that operating in countries where the people hate us is a dangerous no-win situation.
The military is not leaving Iraq this year or next year or the next.Corporate America,the top echelon in the chain of command, ruling this country, will not allow it. The military,second in command, will stay in-country to protect the world's oil producers from any violence, directed toward them, by "hostile natives", to deny the oil companies their profits.
Our corrupt government will continue to sit on their hands and say"this continued occupation and military action is vital to our national interest and important to the production of energy resources". So much for Iraq's freedom and independence.
But dont fret over minor set backs for the Moslem people of Iraq.After all,there were SIX Crusades fought by the "christian" countries of Europe and all of them failed...........and the beat goes on.
Both the Obama administration and the Pentagon know the consequences of leaving soldiers other than the marines at the embassy in Iraq after December 31, 2011 when Iraq SOFA (Status of Force Agreement)expires. No longer will an Iraqi be guilty of any crime if he/she kills an American soldier. He/she will have killed an armed invader. Soon thereafter the now dormant Iraqi resistance will be reborn by furious Sunnis and Shiites. They may even form a temporary truce to kick the Americans out of their country together after which they can resume their mutual killings.
The only way for the US military to remain in Iraq legally is by changing the exit date of the current SOFA Iraq by negotiations. In my opinion the chances to achieve this are close to nil with El Maliki in power. Hence the upcoming elections are significant. Will he win and continue to be our nemesis in Baghdad? Will Chalabi be more pliable? A big win for the Sadr block will close the door on any change of SOFA Iraq. Moreover, the deadline for any proposals for change is December 31, 2010 because there is a one-year provision to that end in the agreement.
Clearly the Obama administration has an extremely weak political hand in Iraq. The noises emanating from Washington and the Pentagon for staying after December 31, 2001 are at this time nothing but trial balloons to find out how much support there is among the American people and politicians for illegally remaining in Iraq after December 31, 2011 under whatever pretense can be jimmied up. One wonders whether they will have the audacity to claim that the agreement is not binding on the US because it is not a treaty ratified by the Senate.
Crowsnest:
Good dream. Good comment. Hope the particulars are as significant as implied, and not mere technicalities to be overruled at will and convenience. Dream on.
Though I don't believe in it at the moment, I'm rooting for that dream: democracy taking hold in Iraq and evicting US troops. If the empire is otherwise weakened - e.g. by military overstretch and failing economy - it might happen. It's a strangely contrary situation to be in: hoping that your country will fail, for the good of the world to be saved.
Obama can't stand up to the pressure. He's as weak as a wet noodle, period!
Anyone who thought fascist amerika would get out of Iraq , had their head in the sand !
What Iraqi withdrawal? There was an Iraqi withdrawal?
Yes. - From the media.