The U.S. military handed over control of the Victory Base Complex to the Iraqi government today. That was the huge base near the Baghdad airport, containing numerous palaces (the Iraqis will now have to decide what to do with them). There are now no more than 500 U.S. soliders in the capital, and only 12,000 in the whole country. I don’t know how many mercenaries are there.
We are on schedule to remove the remainder of our troops by New Year’s Eve.
For weeks now, according to news reports, the main highway leading south to Kuwait has been clogged with American convoys, and the skies over Baghdad have echoed with the roar of aircraft flying troops home. This troop movement is part of an accelerated effort to meet the December 31 withdrawal deadline of all American forces from that ancient land between the Tigris and the Euphrates…
…December 31, 2011, will represent for Americans the end of a harrowing eight and a half years of war…
This has been done quietly, and largely without incident. Despite criticisms by hawks like John McCain, the administration has stuck to its promises to end the war in Iraq and to use as much care in leaving as we lacked in invading. There will be no Fall of Saigon moment. We will not be forced out with our tails between our legs.
Nothing can absolve us of our national guilt for building a false casus belli for war, nor for outrages like Abu Ghraib. The war with Iraq is a stain on our nation’s character. But the president did not cause that stain, and he’s done an excellent and largely unheralded job of righting the ship and steering us out of the conflict.
While significant problems remain to be resolved regarding our military relationship with Iraq going forward, the fact that Iraq has remained largely out of the news is both a credit to the administration and a big reason why they aren’t getting more credit for their performance.
This was the biggest promise Obama made to me, and he kept that promise. For that, I will be forever grateful.
Next up, Afghanistan.
Good job yet again, Obama.
And fuck the anti-Obama “progressives” who simply dismiss such achievements and move on to their next shiny thing outrage du jour, with no purpose than to fan their Obama Derangement Syndrome.
Well, I’m one of those people and I don’t dismiss this. Sorry for not living up to expectations.
I spent the last 3-1/2 years understanding that this was happening. We were withdrawing from Iraq in March 2009; and we kept right on withdrawing in November, and in July 2010 and in December 2010 and in April 2011 and in October 2011.
I understood that this was going on – that Obama would keep, was in the process of keeping, the most important promise he made during his campaign and when he came into office. And I took this understanding into account when I was making judgments and predictions about his performance and character.
A whole lot of other people didn’t understand this. They actually thought that Obama had gone back on his promise, and that we were not withdrawing from Iraq. Every time he reiterated that we were withdrawing from Iraq, they thought he was lying. They, too, took their “understanding” of his Iraq policy, and its relationship to the promises he made on the campaign trial, into account when they made judgments and predictions about his performance and character.
Well, a whole lot of people have to go back and revise their opinion not just about Obama’s Iraq policy, but about the other conclusions they drew based on what they thought they knew about Obama’s Iraq policy.
The line from the “progressives” is that Obama was forced to leave by Bush’s agreement with Iraq and that he tried to wriggle out of it. Because the “progressives” are always ready to take GOP stories at face value.
Well said.
There was a report this AM on NPR that discusses how challenging it is to hold missions near the Afghan-Pak border. The reporter reminds us of how poorly defined the border is (about 3:30):
http://www.npr.org/2011/12/02/143039969/u-s-troops-monitor-volatile-afghan-province
The Wikipedia entry on the Durand Line history holds part of the key:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Durand_Line
Amen, Booman.
Promises depend on your definitions.
We can still afford Blackwater.
I liked the comment about the State Dept. providing jobs for vets.
It’s usually best to use definitions reasonably close to the common parlance. That way, your language can have meaning for other people.
If a definition of “withdrawal” that includes some security guards for diplomats is good enough for the freaking Mahdi Army militia, then it’s probably not necessary for any stateside Americans to insist otherwise.
Like so many of the Obama administration’s successes.
So now that we know that, yes, Obama really was withdrawing the troops from Iraq, there’s another question we need to nail down: fast withdrawal vs. slow withdrawal.
The argument for a gradual, phased withdrawal was always based on the concern that a quick withdrawal could create a power vacuum and set off violence, while moving more slowly – but still certainly – towards a full withdrawal would be better for the short-term security situation, thus providing an opportunity for a political solution among the Iraqis, that would head off that violence.
The argument against this position was always based on the claim “The country is going to fall apart when we leave, regardless. There’s going to be a resumption of the insurgency and civil war, and there’s nothing we can do to stop it. We screwed up Iraq, and staying longer can’t fix things. It can only make them worse.”
Both sides seemed to agree that there was a real threat of serious violence breaking out. Both sides seemed to agree that we were talking about truly horrific levels of violence, on par with 2005-2006, when the ethnic cleansing was happening and something like 100,000 people died, maybe more.
I don’t think that the failure of the Iraq state and a resumption of the civil war looks very likely now. I suspect that the people who argued for the fast withdrawal are now going to jump all the way from “A renewed civil war is inevitable, so withdrawing slowly is pointless,” to “A renewed civil war was never going to happen, so withdrawing slowly was pointless.”
100,000 lives is a lot of people. If 100,000 violent deaths that I’d thought were inevitable did not come to pass, I’d consider whether the people who were saying that they weren’t inevitable might have been onto something.
The argument for slow withdrawal masked the fact that fast withdrawal was not politically possible. Look at how the commitment to shut down Guantanamo has gone. The Congress now wants to keep military tribunals forever.
There’s that, too, but even on the level of “What would be best?” there were a significant difference of opinion.
President Obama has done much better at national security and foreign policy because the President generally has more discretion once the funds have been appropriated. And he has be freer to follow his own strategy without as much obstruction from Republicans (and Democrats) in Congress.
This is the fulfillment of a campaign pledge and an international agreement. There are institutional forces in the military and intelligence communities that are longing to keep an occupation presence in Iraq; that is not going to happen. There was an article this week about Joe Biden talking to Maliki about trainers. The Mahdi army is going to make sure that those trainers do not become a means of further US imperial behavior in Iraq. And as I’ve said before, there is an Arab Awakening bubbling in Iraqi politics that has not yet emerged publicly since February. Obama deserves credit for this happening as much for what he did not do as for what he did.
Will private interests try backdoor moves to exert American domination of Iraq’s future. Is PNAC a four-letter acronym? Is Cheney a Republican? But that is no longer official US policy. We. Are. Out. Of. Iraq….Finally.
But the bigger picture. When President Obama took office, many observers were worried about what would happen in Egypt after Mubarak, with many expectations of a Wahabist-style Islamic state like Saudi Arabia but with radical anti-American posture. Because of what the Obama did not do (and most likely because of what the US did behind the scenes) that nightmare scenario did not and likely will not happen. Tunisia, Morocco, and Turkey show the direction of the Islamic Middle East. Morocco is reforming. Across the Maghreb, now the only missing piece (and it is a huge one) is Algeria.
The major failing of US foreign policy is in the area where domestic politics interferes with national security – the policy with regard to Israel. And that keeps the Levant in turmoil. The biggest challenge facing the Obama administration right now is not extricating itself from Afghanistan but acting with restraint with respect to the unwinding of the dictatorship in Syria. It will be harder to do nothing than to try to do something. The smart move is to take cues from the Syrian opposition. External pressure but no military intervention. Listening to the locals helped in Libya; it will help in Syria.
The second area in which doing no military intervention would help is Iran. In fact, racheting down the conflict would probably help immensely were it not for the usual suspects in Congress beating the drums of war. This one requires dribbling and a four corners play to run out the clock until 2013.
Congratulations to President Obama, Secretary Clinton, Secretary Clark, and especially the Iraqi embassy for seeing the SOFA through. And many thanks to all the US military and their families who had to sacrifice for the sake of this illegal war. Those soldiers deserve a parade and some restitution of their economic position–quite a few were reservists who had so many tours of duty they lost their jobs. Not to mention the medical care and PTSD counseling to get them back into civil society.
As always, a terrific comment.
There are institutional forces in the military and intelligence communities that are longing to keep an occupation presence in Iraq; that is not going to happen.
I was thinking about this the other day, and it led me to all of the ways in which the Obama administration has defied the wishes of the MIC:
Missile defense bases.
F-22 cuts.
Future Combat System cuts.
Iraq withdrawal.
Announcement of an exit timeline in Afghanistan.
DADT repeal.
Intervention in Libya (over the objection of his own SecDef).
Once we were involved in Libya, limitations on that involvement.
Triggered defense cuts in the debt-ceiling deal (Again, over the the objection of his own SecDef).
That’s not a bad start.
Indeed, Israel is the nightmare from which American foreign policy cannot awake. I thought J Street was supposed to make it easier for Obama to advance a less insanely one-sided approach, but am I wrong to think that it has lost its momentum?
They’re pushing back against a highly-successful project that’s been going on for 60 years in Washington.
How does this relate to Bush’s SOFA? Is it an outgrowth of the original framework there?