Obama to announce 19-month Withdrawal Timetable for Iraq?
4 US Soldiers Wounded
President Obama included this sentence in his State of the Union Address , "I will soon announce a way forward in Iraq that leaves Iraq to its people and responsibly ends this war."
The LAT explains this cryptic reference, based on leaks that suggest that President Obama will announce next week a 19-month timetable for the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq. He had campaigned on a pledge of getting out within 16 months of his inauguration, but his military commanders had pressed for 23 months. The withdrawal timetable affects two-thirds of US troops now in Iraq, but it is expected that even after 2010 some 50,000 will remain. The Iraqi military continues to need training, and it cannot always handle difficult situations, needing US teams to come in to their aid. Iraq has no air force to speak of. Its newly ordered aircraft will not arrive until 2013 and it will take years to train the pilots. Iraq's military will therefore need US-supplied close air support for years to come, and all the support staff required. The new Iraqi military also does occasionally get into fights it cannot finish, and so rapid response teams remain important.
Although the US military hopes that the Iraqi government won't press the issue, the Status of Forces agreement specifies that all US troops must be out by the end of 2011. The nationalist forces in parliament seem likely to be strengthened in the next election, and I don't expect Iraq to be eager to extend the US mandate. (The Shiite party most explicitly willing to keep US troops in Iraq is the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, which lost badly in the recent provincial elections.)
With the exception of the air force support personnel, the US will likely be asked to get its other troops out in 2011.
There is a lot of speculation out there as to how the US public will react if Obama modifies his campaign pledge of 16 months. Personally, I don't think there is a lot passion out there right now for foreign affairs. People have discounted Iraq as a national project and don't seem invested in it any more, for the most part. They think it was a bad idea. They want out. But I don't think most of them care about the exact timetable for withdrawal, and certainly not whether it is 16 or 19 months. Whether they mind 50,000 troops staying in Iraq in 2011 will surely depend on things like the casualty rate. How unpredictable that is is obvious from the last two days' news (see below).
The security situation remains fragile in Iraq. VOA reports, "The U.S. military says four American soldiers were wounded and an interpreter was killed when gunmen attacked a police station in northern Iraq." VOA adds, "On Monday, the U.S. military said that three American soldiers and an interpreter were killed during combat operations in Iraq's Diyala province north of Baghdad."
A Sunni Arab politician who now stands accused of orchestrating attacks on the Green Zone defended himself on Tuesday, saying he had been targeted by the (Shiite) government because of his (Sunni) political positions.
McClatchy reports political violence for Tuesday.
'Baghdad
Eight people were injured including two national police members when two roadside bombs detonated targeting a patrol of the national police in Palestine Street in east Baghdad.
Nineveh
Three policemen were injured by a roadside bomb that targeted their patrol in Mansour neighborhood in south Mosul on Monday morning.
T[wo] civilians when gunmen threw a grenade targeting the office of the PUK Party in downtown Mosul city
An Iraqi interpreter was killed and other people were injured including US soldiers when two policemen attacked a police station in West Mosul on Tuesday afternoon. US military confirmed the incident.
Kirkuk
Gunmen kidnapped a civilian near a church in downtown Kirkuk city on Monday evening.
A gunman was injured seriously while he was trying to plant a roadside bomb in Hawija town west of Kirkuk city on Monday evening.
Diyala
Three insurgents were killed when clashes broke out between a joint American and Iraqi forces and insurgents in one of the villages of Mandili town east of Baquba early morning.'
End/ (Not Continued)
Cont'd (click below or on "comments")
posted by Juan Cole @ 2/25/2009 12:59:00 AM
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12 Comments:
No matter how it's spun 50,000 American troops still sounds like the occupation of the Iraq to me. That's the size of the entire army of some countries!
The generals who don't want to leave will try to make it impossible to leave.
By all means let's help the Iraqis kill each other after we have "withdrawn". Airpower may be a bit of a blunderbuss when used to shape Iraq's civil and political patterns to our liking, but, what the heck, eight years in Afghanistan has shown what it can accomplish - pass the needle.
Those 50,000 military will not be there to bomb an occasional "safe house". Their mission will be to foster neocon fantasies of Middle East hegemony. And to save the US military's face. It can't be accused of losing as long as it's still in their fighting.
Its time to stop taking the "side of the moment" and let Iraq be all it can be.
We are not leaving Iraq, only pretending to leave, that is clear and Joseph Stiglitz points out that the force we will leave in Iraq and have in Afghanistan will be as expensive as the forces we have had in Afghanistan and Iraq through the surge.
Then there are the special forces operating in Pakistan.
http://www.democracynow.org/2009/2/25/headlines#5
February 25, 2009
More than 16,000 civilians have been killed and one million displaced since US-backed Ethiopian troops invaded Somalia to oust Islamist leaders two years ago. The ongoing unrest has prompted calls for changes to US policy in the region. In a letter last week, Democratic Senator Russ Feingold urged President Obama to make what he called “a public, unequivocal statement” announcing a “clear break” from Bush administration policy in Somalia.
-- Amy Goodman
"Obama to announce 19-month Withdrawal Timetable for Iraq?"
Now that the campaign is over, can we PLEASE stop calling this a withdrawal, and call it what it is? It is a reconfiguring of the occupation. At best it is a "drawdown" of occupation forces.
And for those, such as the normally far more with-it Rachel Maddow, who are shocked - SHOCKED! - that Obama is planning to keep 50,000 "residual" forces in Iraq, if you had been listening beyond the sound bytes it would come as no surprise. That is exactly what he and some of his staff said he intended to do.
"The generals who don't want to leave will try to make it impossible to leave."
What makes you think that Obama ever wanted or intended to leave Iraq?
Isn't this "close air support forever" effectively letting Bush have his way despite the 2008 elections? Just tell the Iraqis they have 19 months to put together an Air Force - and if US suppliers can't (or won't) deliver until 2013 (which will be 10+ years since they have known this was inevitable), then go out on the world arms market where someone can always deliver quickly if the money is right (and it will be, since no doubt we're paying) and if the product can be less than state-of-the-art and pre-owned (and why not?).
The US should simply withdraw 100% of our troops ASAP - I find it hard to believe that our trillion dollar DOD can't bring home 150,000 soldiers in 6 months or less. Just use containerized shipping where it works and you can plug in to the commercial shipping market, which is vast and currently underutilized. Use mil transport for the rest - and commandeer enough civilian airliners to get all the troops home in a few weeks (YES the DOD can commandeer civilian jets, as many as needed - the DOD pays a slight premium on its "peacetime" air fares and opts to not use certain common discounts year after year, in return for this right in "wartime" ; little known fact!). Let the contractors pack up and stop worrying about what happens when we leave. Iraq has said they can handle it, they want us out and they are a sovereign nation (or so we say). If they can't handle it and the government is overthrown, tough luck - it happens all the time in the 3rd world and we barely notice unless there is oil involved.
Anyway...Obama proposes, but the Recession disposes.
With 8 UK/US military killed in Afghanistan in 2 days, Russia squeezing the US out of central Asia, and the yet unknown depths of the recession, Iraq may yet come to resemble a too expensive luxury for 50,000 troops.
Plenty of commenters sceptical of US intentions to leave Iraq.
That is right. If the US were omnipotent, and free to decide what it wanted, that would be the case.
But the US is not free. There are many constraints - the economic crisis, the engagement in Afghanistan, and perhaps other crises as yet unknown.
I took Obama's statement to be relatively positive. As the US has not wanted to envision the potential futures, they will do as he says; Obama will overrule the generals who want to maintain 150,000, because that is unaffordable. I had that feeling very strongly from his remark.
The affair is not over. They will find that 50,000 is not workable. And then the problem will resurface: how to maintain 50,000 in Iraq? Put the force back up to 150,000? Out of the question.
It's an inevitable decline. A small figleaf that the Iraqis will ignore is the only conclusion.
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Can we look closer at all those reasons listed for maintaining a "residual" force ?
*** The Iraqi military continues to need training, and
*** it cannot always handle difficult situations, needing US teams to come in to their aid.
*** Iraq has no air force to speak of. Its newly ordered aircraft will not arrive until 2013 and
*** it will take years to train the pilots.
*** Iraq's military will therefore need US-supplied close air support for years to come, and all the support staff required.
*** The new Iraqi military also does occasionally get into fights it cannot finish, and so rapid response teams remain important.
Every one of these missions has been contracted out in Iraq, at one time or another. EVERY ONE!
Contracted out by the US Army (JCC-I) to one of hundreds of Private Military Companies.
The Iraqi Government can sign and pay for those contracts just as easily as the US Army.
For all the huffing and puffing,
none of these relates to a valid justification for the residuals.
An Avid Student of the Iraq Adventure
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"none of these relates to a valid justification for the residuals."
The "residuals are about one thing and one thing only, and that is empire. It is about establishing a permanent presence in Iraq by reverting to a version of the boil-a-frog method.
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