Why is the fact that the U.S. government is contractually obligated to withdraw all its troops out of Iraq by the end of 2011 so frequently ignored in US public discussions?
Last November, duly authorized representatives of the US government– Gen. Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker– signed the text of a “Status of Forces Agreement/ Withdrawal Agreement” with the government of Iraq.
When a government changes or is replaced, existing international agreements remain in place unless there is a new, explicit agreement between the parties to rescind or revise them. It couldn’t be otherwise in an orderly international system.
A good part of the problem in the disrespectful and border-line illegal way that Americans have been treating last November’s SOFA/WA stems from Pres. Obama himself. He remains fixated on arguing for the details of the plan on which he ran for office: the plan for a substantial drawdown of US force levels “within 16 months” but the retention of a significant US force in Iraq for an undefined period thereafter.
Understandable and in many ways admirable that a democratically elected leader would try to hold fast to what he had promised during the election campaign.
However, what Obama continues to propose regarding Iraq has already been superseded in international law by the decision the outgoing Bush administration made– on Thanksgiving Day, no less– to commit to the terms of the SOFA/WA.
(I have been interested to note that, as part of its purging of the White House web site, the incoming Obama administration removed from the site the authoritative PDF version of the signed SOFA/WA that had been there up until the Inauguration– and that I had linked to in this Nov. 28th JWN post. Now, if you want to find a copy of the agreement’s final text, as far as I can see you’ll have to go to a non-governmental site this one– PDF, hosted by the NYT. One strong advantage of the earlier White House PDF was that it had the actual signatures on it. It must still exist somewhere in the bowels of the federal government’s archives?)
MY question is: Why is the existence of the November SOFA/WA agreement not much more of an issue than it now seems to be, in the discussions in both Congress and among the US commentatoriat at large?
Why does at seem as if so many members of the US political elite just want to ignore the agreement?
Case in point, today: This lengthy piece by Tom Ricks in Sunday’s Washington Post. Ricks’s main argument is that the US military may well have to end up staying (and fighting) in Iraq for many years into the future. He writes– without expressing any demurral from the views expressed– that:
- The quiet consensus emerging among many who have served in Iraq is that U.S. soldiers will probably be engaged in combat there until at least 2015 — which would put us at about the midpoint of the conflict now.
The piece contains sound-bite quotes from a significant number of US and western military and “expert” sources. I don’t know if the people Ricks quoted– who include our friend Reidar Visser– made any mention of the constraints of the SOFA/WA in their conversations with Ricks. But here’s the thing: Nowhere in the piece at all does Ricks either make in his own name, or attribute to any of his sources, any mention of the SOFA/WA.
It’s as though it doesn’t exist. It’s been simply air-brushed out of (this US-centric version of) history.
The reason I’m concerned about this is that I have a lot of respect for the writing and reporting that Ricks has done on the US war in Iraq. So if even someone of his caliber acts as though the SOFA/WA is irrelevant, we are in deep trouble.
It’s quite incredible that Bush and the Reps have handed Obama and the Dems the reason to get out of Iraq on a plate, but it doesn’t look like they are going to use it.
I’d say that it is US imperialism as usual. Many Americans, including liberal ones makes as if the only reason why the US is in ME is due to Israel lobbying through AIPAC and its controll of the US Congress. IMO this argument is not much better than the “international Jewish plot” argument of the thirties.
It is an easy way to shun the responsibility of what US imperialism is doing in the ME on someone else’s shoulders. America is a powerfull country and she won’t support a small country/ally like Israel if she didn’t think it was in her interest (or at least in the interest of the main American corporations, especially the militaro-industrial complex and the oil producers).
In fact the US ME policy is tied to her wish to control oil ressources and to remain present in the Asiatic and ME theaters for geopolitical reason. Israel right wingers and likkudniks are doing a lot of P&R elsewhere in the world as well. If the US chooses to support them unfailingly, it is her own choice : the US government has enough knowledge and clue to see clearly though the game of the Israelians, however vocal they are.
(JWN doesn’t make that kind of assumption, but it is often present in Juan Cole’s blog, for instance).
US imperialism is still obviously alive and kicking – and is it seems, in fact, deepening its strangle hold over the American populace. (IMO Obama is just its latest public, and very plausible, face) The ignoring of the Iraq SOFA/WA was always an obvious inevitability to any who see clearly the magnitude of the institutionalized corruption of the US by its imperialist power hungry masters in the Pentagon, Wall Street, and various ‘other’ seats of the ‘elite imperium’.
I do believe though, that this ‘Titanic’ militaristic monster, (spending more on its war machine than ‘ALL’ the rest of the world combined!!!) with all its 700 plus military bases around the planet, and also its spewing out more guns, war planes, missiles etc. in arms sales, than any other country in world history, with all its bloody, immoral, ensuing mayhem, – has hit its proverbial iceberg!
I think Chalmers Johnson has it about right in his trilogy – but many others have seen the writing on the wall as well, and written copiously about it – Chomsky being an example. The question is I think: ‘What comes after empire? – and how?’
Empires die reluctantly. Good luck.
I have been amazed at the hubris of all this. Frankly , the Iraqi’s outfought us. We were, and still are in a very vulnerable position. Frankly, if we had tried to stay in Iraq, we would have lost our entire force if the country rose up.
In November 2007 I published a report in the Democrats Abroad Japan website on how our Iraq force would be destroyed if we attacked Iran.
http://dajwebnews.blogspot.com/2007_11_01_archive.html
Basically, the Iraqi’s themselves would have risen in anger if we bombed Iran. The thing is, nothing has changed today. That is why the Bush administration wanted to stay in Iraq, but ultimately gave up.
The Iraqi’s if they rise can destroy our force. Meanwhile, in our convulsions as we go down, we have the firepower to make a real mess out of Iraq. Both sides lose big time. So a way out was negotiated.
I do not think that President Obama intends to keep military forces in Iraq. I think this is the brainchild of General’s Petraeus and Ordierno.
General Petraeus was way overblown by the Bush administration, he did not do anything significant in Iraq. In the initial invasion, he was in command of the 101st Airborne, and got Mosul. It fell apart after he left, but not because he was great commander, just because a brigade replaced a division. All this counter insurgency tactics stuff he is credited with inventing, It is just rehashed Marine Corps ideas from Vietnam, which worked in Vietnam. Nothing original. Now Ordierno, he is an absolute thug. He was in command of the 4th infantry division in the initial invasion, and he missed out because Turkey denied him passage. But as soon as he got into Iraq, he treated the Iraqi’s with a very heavy hand, and helped set off the insurgency.
As far as taking credit for the Sunni Awakening councils, neither man can take credit. It is the Sunni tribes themselves who decided to ask for American help, because they lost the battle of Baghdad to Shitte militia. To show how unoriginal a thinker Petraeus is, he says he will do the same thing in Afghanistan. Afghanistan is not Iraq, it is a completely different kettle of fish. I think the only thing we can do there is back a strain of the Taliban we can tolerate with arms, and withdraw our troops. And we tell them never again host radical terror groups. That is the extent of what we can do in Afghanistan.
But Petraeus has no right to claim success for the Awakening councils or the surge. The surge came in just after the Shia had taken over most of Baghdad. So the fighting down of it’s own.
There are people who know this, like me for example. But a few days ago, I was reading that Iraqi PM Maliki making statements that we could all leave Iraq much more quickly, like tomorrow, and he wouldn’t mind.
I think that General’s Petraeus and Ordierno are putting their career interests ahead of the interests of the United States.
And I think that Barack Obama should sack the both of them.
[For reasons of nationalism, if Sadr can be drawn into the political arena, he may effectively become an ally of convenience to the Americans. “It should not be forgotten that the Sadrists are Tehran’s historical main enemy among the Shiites of Iraq,” noted Reidar Visser, an Oxford-educated expert on Iraqi Shiites. But others contend that Sadr is just lying low until the United States draws down its troops and declares its combat role concluded.]
Anti-Iranian Sadr? What a discovery! Did Visser ever say such a thing?
Was it your letter to the editor of the Toronto Star that I just read?
If so, I agree completely.
But what’s to be done?
Helena, this is precisely the fate some of us expected/predicted for the SOFA.
Tis email as recived:
I saw the videos of Thomas Ricks’ interview on the TV about this subject – the same as he discusses in the WAPO article.
It was very evident in the interview that what he is doing is transmitting the “generals'” point of view. It’s just a straight transmit of what some or many in the military think. It’s a move to convince Obama to follow their line, I would say. I wouldn’t like to say what Obama’s point of view really is, but I guess it’s not this, or this move wouldn’t be necessary.
Of course they – Petraeus and Odierno – want the US military still there in Iraq in 15, 30, or 100 years time.
You just have to read the article to see that it is a narrative intended to prove a point. Pretty well all the “experts” cited are US military, apart from the one citation of Reidar Visser, whose quote is irrelevant to the subject, and Toby Dodge, who is mentioned as a sometime advisor of Petraeus. Well, we all know how good the US military are in understanding complex politics.
What really stands out is the prediction that Iraq is about to collapse into chaos and genocide. And particularly, of course, if the US military is not there to keep the peace. That, as a prediction, is really old hat.
When I look at the situation in Iraq, it looks to me as though things are coming together slowly. Maliki is getting his act together. He’s had another success in the local elections. Nationalism and centralisation are reasserting themselves. There’s no real danger any more of Iraq breaking up.
And yet here we are hearing from the generals that Iraq is about to descend into chaos. Yes, that was a real danger in 2006 (mainly because of US provocations), but not today. It stinks to high heaven of selling a line.
Alex,
You are very correct when you say America is the cause of trouble in Iraq. How conveniently we forget that it was our original unprovoked invasion that set off all these problems.
Maybe if we just left, the Iraqi’s could figure it out for themselves?
Badger aptly calls it recycled rubbish.
It stinks to high heaven of selling a line.
That’s why they call them the FCM (Fawning Corporate Media). But perhaps it must be made clear that the Military is still a cornerstone of the deadly triad, the Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex?
I cannot say that I share Helena’s respect for the writing and reporting that Ricks has done on the US war in Iraq.
Enforceability is an important part of law. It is no good having a Patent if you can’t stop the guys in Ruritania running off copies of your device and selling them.
The same problem applies to the open cases in international law of the continued collective punishment of the Gazans, and to the implementation of the agreed withdrawal from Iraq.
Looking in from the outside the politics of the thing seem to be to immerse Obama in sorting out the economy by making every step downright difficult with the military continuing to implement the imperial doctrine in spite of guidance and policy from above.
The story does remind me of the beginning of Charlie Wilson’s War where CIA and Military and a faithful few politicians decided Jimmy Carter was a wimp and started a whole new war on their own without telling anybody.
Useful words to look up are Insubordination and Mutiny.