At yesterday’s panel discussion on the regional implications of the US withdrawal from Iraq, former assistant secretary of defense Larry Korb started off his presentation by saying,
- We need to remember how just plain lucky we are that the Bush administration did sign the Withdrawal Agreement/SOFA last November. This has been a really good thing– for us Americans, for the Iraqis, for everyone. And we need to remember that it wouldn’t have happened at all if the Iraqis hadn’t insisted on it.
So now, we don’t have to have any endless debate in this country over “who lost Iraq”, as we did over “who lost Vietnam.”
Korb is a very pleasant guy, whose specialty is really force planning. He mentioned some of the extreme stresses that the Iraq war inflicted on the US military. Including, he cited a recent study from the Rand Corp. that says that some 350,000 US troops who have been subjected to the stresses of repeated deployment now have mental-health problems.
Well, from Korb’s perspective it might look as if it was just “luck” that motivated the Iraqi government to insist on getting Washington to sign a Withdrawal Agreement that includes a date certain for the exit of all US forces from Iraq.
The PDF of the Agreement’s text can now be found here. It stipulates, Article 24 (1) that:
- All United States forces shall withdraw from all Iraqi territory no later than December 31, 2011.
But of course it wasn’t just “luck” that motivated the Iraqi government to insist on the agreement. It was the determined organizing and activity of nationalist-minded members of Iraq’s parliament that pushed the Maliki government to do so.
You may recall that in the weeks leading up to the late-November signing of the final text, the official spin from the Bush administration side was that no, of course there wouldn’t be any complete withdrawal, and nor would there be any defined deadlines.
But there were. Both of them. And it was the Bush administration that signed off on it. Which means the Republicans are now in no position at all to blame Obama for “cutting and running”, or even, really, to blame him for many of the things that might yet go wrong with the withdrawal as it proceeds towards its end-of-2011 deadline.
Yesterday, I finally caught up again with Raed Jarrar, the tireless organizer in DC for a US withdrawal from Iraq. He was the key person, last summer, who coordinated a visit to DC by an Iraqi parliamentary delegation that helped people in this country start to understand more about the dynamics within the Iraqi parliament.
Raed is currently working with the American Friends Service Committee. Last month he and two colleagues from the Friends Committee on National Legislation had another good victory– this time working with the US legislature: They got the House of Representatives to include in the military budget authorization bill crystal-clear language that:
- 1. Affirms the United States legal agreement with Iraq to withdraw all U.S. military troops from that country by December 31, 2011; and
2. Requires the Defense Department to submit detailed quarterly reports to six congressional committees on their progress in meeting various parameters of that withdrawal.
This has been a tremendous initiative! It is the first explicit acknowledgment and support coming from the US Congress for the Withdrawal Agreement.
Raed said yesterday that they are pretty confident the same language will be included in the bill adopted by the Senate.
Now, he’s working on helping parliamentarians from Iraq and Kuwait win support for an initiative to end Kuwait’s longstanding financial and other claims against Iraq, so that Iraq can be brought out of the “Chapter Seven” position it is still in, under the terms of the UN Charter.
… Bottom line: No, Larry Korb, it is not just dumb luck that gives the US and Iraq a Withdrawal Agreement that turns out to be good for everyone. It is the dedicated organizing of sometimes small groups of people, working for just ends. As Margaret Mead said (paraphrasing here): “Never doubt that a small group of people can change the world. It’s the only thing that ever has.”
(More from the conference, later.)
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Apologies for the horrid typos that I’d left in here this morning. I was rushing to catch a train. And succeeded, so that was good. ~HC.
Hi,
Please help us reach young people, considering service in the U.S. military, with a truthful and
equal message. The military has nothing to do with video games, race cars or pro athletics. It
should be able to stand, and sell itself, on its own merit. There are hundreds of millions of
dollars being spent on creating an irellevant image that could be spent on the soldier and his or
her family.
Please visit – http://www.cammmo.org
Raed is a phenomenal person from a phenomenal family. It was Raed’s brother, Khalid, who put me in touch with Gabe and Teresa, an American couple in Damascus who dreamed up, initiated and now run the wonderful Iraqi Student Project in Damascus.
These are people who really and truly put their money where their mouths are, figuratively and literally.
I hope that there really will be a full withdrawal and not a continuation of a reconfigured occupation as Obama et al. clearly have in mind. If the U.S. DOES make a full withdrawal, it will be thanks to Iraqis devoting body and soul to it as Raed is in the U.S. and so many others are in Iraq.
And don’t forget their mom, Faiza.
Faiza is nothing short of amazing!
he cited a recent study from the Rand Corp. that says that some 350,000 US troops who have been subjected to the stresses of repeated deployment now have mental-health problems.
Yes, here the problem I have.
350,000 US soldiers who sent by US government to launch war on 20million in Iraq not on hand picked regime gangs.
As Fiza saw in 1991 and well described, 20 Million Iraqis had 20 years under tyrant feast.
Let not forgot here, followed Fiza visited in 1991, a 13 years of inhuman sanction for 20 million people inside Iraq, people lived in hardship of life that changed so much their lives far from that under 20 years regime feast have done.
I were in Iraq in 1999 saw the reality there, one of my friend described to me the sanction made Iraqi lost their humanity?
In 2003 the new game started with shock and awe no one can believe was for regime change as it designed for 20 millions not to kill a group of thugs and gangs who fled the country before that, they are now everywhere with big dollars.
Did any one of you and those who are “very pleasant guy,.. specialty is really force planning thought about 20 millions Iraqis when US troops went in and done what they done? do they care?
If you care then read This report on 14 Mar 2008 and see what the occupation done to Iraq as humans.
Himansshu H Singh
don’t tell me you coming here to tell us those who done crimes in Iraq are Few Bad Apples?
Recalling the importance of the Iraqi people’s referendum on the Iraqi-US “withdrawal agreement”… essential though it was and is … it’s not going to happen.
The Obama/Maliki condominium has canceled the referendum which the Iraqi parliament insisted upon as a condition for their acceptance of that agreement.
The upsurge in violence in Iraq is no doubt due to the point blank betrayal of the Iraqi people by Barack Obama and his compradors in the Iraqi government.
If it was indeed Raed Jarrar who influenced the US to sign the withdrawal/SOFA agreement, then I congratulate him. Myself, I thought it came more from Ryan Crocker, US ambassador in Baghdad. But I could be wrong, and I am open to correction.
Well, as high as my regard is for Ra’ed and his family, I certainly don’t think he managed that all on his own. But Ryan Crocker?! Really?! Difficult to imagine Bush’s imperial viceroy – ummmm, sorry, “ambassador” (as if an occupying power can have an actual ambassador to the country it occupies!) – insisting on something that actually imposes the rights of the occupied country on the occupying power.