Iraq Troop Draw-down by EoY 2011?

@Irishk,

Irishk wrote:

This is the wording of the agreement reached back in 2008:

Quote:
On November 27, 2008, the Iraqi Parliament ratified a Status of Forces Agreement with the United States, establishing that U.S. combat forces will withdraw from Iraqi cities by June 30, 2009, and all U.S. forces will be completely out of Iraq by December 31, 2011, but allowing for further negotiation if the Iraqi Prime Minister believes Iraq is not stable enough.

I haven't seen any evidence that the Iraqis want us to stay.

It's probably time for them to sink or swim on their own. I hope they swim.

ART: One article I scanned the other day said 160 soldiers would remain in Iraq, their duties to be embassy-related. I'm assuming guard positions. I hope they're very well paid.

You raised a point that my friend drew my attention to last night. Even if Obama had wanted to, the Iraqi parliament voted that US Troops must be gone by Dec 31st. In this way, Obama deserves less credit for the end of the war. Simply put, Iraq said they want to be on their own. They have the right to dictate their own future ultimately, and so we're done.

A
R
T

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I wondered about the equipment assets being left behind, as well. Nine weeks sounds like a fairly short time table.

The New York Times says there's a possibility some troops will be returning to Iraq in 2012, though, so no reason to face a logistics nightmare of transporting all that stuff.

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John Stewart on the Republican reaction to Obama fulfilling the agreement reached by GW Bush with Iraq.

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-october-24-2011/end-o-potamia

You guys are just freaking weird.

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I think our military has eyes on more troublesome but smaller areas, namely Yeman, Somalia, and financial problems with China.

Austin American Statesman, Monday, Oct. 24, 2011
By Robert Burns

BALI, Indonesia — In the final days of the U.S. war in Iraq, the outlook for America's military entanglements is markedly different from the confusing, convulsive first days.

Early on, Iraq looked, to many, like one in a string of big conflicts in a "war on terror."

That was the view of John Abizaid when the now-retired Army general led U.S. forces in Iraq in 2003-04. At a U.S. base in northern Iraq one day in early 2004, Abizaid told soldiers preparing to return home that he hoped they would remain in uniform and keep building combat experience.

Asked by an Associated Press reporter why he had made that pitch, Abizaid said, "I think the country is going to face more of these (ground wars) in the years ahead."

That was a widely accepted, and often dreaded, view at the time.

Now, with the last American troops set to depart by year's end, Iraq seems more likely to signal an end to such long and enormously costly undertakings in the name of preventing another terrorist attack on U.S. soil — at least under the administration of President Barack Obama. He opposed the Iraq war and has declared that "the tides of war are receding."

With Obama also pledging to end the U.S. combat role in Afghanistan within three years, the military's focus is turning to places such as Yemen and Somalia.

There, the approach is different. Aerial drones, proxy forces and small teams of U.S. commandos are the preferred formula for containing the Islamic extremists who would plot terrorist attacks against the U.S.

Libya, too, has so far been a case for limited U.S. military intervention. The U.S. cleared the sky ahead of a NATO-led air campaign to protect civilians without putting any troops on the ground.

It took about eight months and cost the U.S. about $1.1 billion to achieve the Libyan rebels' goal of toppling Col. Moammar Gadhafi.

The potential for bigger conflicts persists in places such as Pakistan, whose growing arsenal of nuclear weapons sets it apart from other potential hot spots.

Iran is a major worry, too, in light of its suspected drive to build a nuclear bomb and its proclaimed goal of wiping out Israel. But a U.S. invasion of Iran, on a scale like Iraq, seems highly unlikely for now.

There are other troublesome security challenges facing the U.S., including in Asia, where China is expanding its military and asserting its influence.

But the Obama approach — not unique, but distinctive in comparison with that of his predecessor, George W. Bush — is to try to prevent festering security problems from growing into full-blown crises.

The U.S. military can play a role in those cases without being called on to invade and depose a government.

Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates captured this idea in a speech last winter to Army cadets at the U.S. Military Academy in which he said it would be unwise to fight another war like Iraq or Afghanistan.

"In my opinion, any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should 'have his head examined,' as General MacArthur so delicately put it," Gates said

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@joefromchicago,

actually no he didn't.

Quote:

BARACK OBAMA

Differentiates himself from Clinton and Edwards as the only major candidate who opposed the war from the beginning. Would remove one to two combat brigades each month until most U.S. troops are out in 16 months. Would leave residual force to fight terrorists.

source

In any event its been sorta a moot point since the security agreement was signed by the Bush administration in 2008.

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@failures art,

October 25, 2011
Did Obama engage as U.S.-Iraqi troop talks faltered?
By Roy Gutman | McClatchy Newspapers

BAGHDAD — Throughout the summer and autumn, as talks on a continued U.S. military presence in Iraq foundered, President Barack Obama and his point man on Iraq, Vice President Joe Biden, remained largely aloof from the process, logs released by the U.S. Embassy here suggest.

The omission would be an unusual one, given the high priority U.S. officials had given to achieving an agreement for some sort of residual U.S. presence in Iraq after the Dec. 31 pullout deadline, and the White House labeled the suggestion inaccurate. A spokesman said the logs released by the embassy were incomplete.

The listing provided by the embassy — drawn, the embassy said, from the White House website — indicates that Obama had no direct contact with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki between Feb. 13, when he telephoned the prime minister, until Friday, when he called Maliki to tell him U.S. troops would be withdrawn by Dec. 31.

The embassy listing prepared from the White House's own records showed that Biden telephoned Maliki on Dec. 21, the day Maliki formed a new government, and visited here Jan. 18, but had no direct contact after that date, according to the official listing.

A White House spokesman, Tommy Vietor, noted, however, that Maliki's office released a statement Sept. 22 saying that Maliki and Biden had had a phone conversation that day in which the disposition of U.S. troops after Dec. 31 was discussed. He said the embassy list obviously had been prepared by someone not familiar with the full range of contacts.

Vietor declined to provide any details about the president's contacts, however.

"The VP talked to senior Iraqi leaders multiple times during that period of time," Vietor wrote in an email. "The President also engaged with Iraqi leaders. Your story is totally wrong."

U.S. Embassy officials, asked in July whether Biden was coming to help secure the deal, which military officers said needed to be concluded by July 31 for planning purposes, said the vice president was too busy trying to end the donnybrook in Congress over raising the national debt ceiling to visit Iraq.

Iraqi government spokesman Tahseen al Shaikhli said he could not explain the lack of contact between Maliki and top-level Americans.

“You’ll have to ask (Obama) why he didn’t intervene before this, or call before this,” he said.

Shaikhli said his government still hopes that an invitation that Obama extended for a meeting with Maliki in December might lead to an agreement between the two countries that would allow uniformed U.S. trainers to deploy to Iraq.

“Maybe when they sit together, they will solve most of the problems,” he said, adding, "Or maybe they will complicate it more."

The issue of whether some U.S. troops might remain in Iraq after the Dec. 31 date, which was set by the so-called Status of Forces Agreement that the administration of President George W. Bush negotiated with the Iraqi government, had always been a complicated one _ both for Iraqi officials and Obama, who promised as a presidential candidate in 2008 that he would bring U.S. troops home from Iraq.

Maliki announced on May 11 that he would consult politicians at every level before deciding whether to ask the United States to keep troops here, and he said he hoped to reach a decision by July 31, the date set by the U.S. military. Iraqi officials soon were saying that the country was hoping that at least 10,000 to 15,000 troops would stay behind.

Iraqi political leaders, with the exception of followers of the militant Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada al Sadr and veteran politician Ahmed Chalabi, indicated that they would favor the continued presence of U.S. forces, but they were less certain about the U.S. demand to provide immunity from prosecution for troops serving here.

The top politicians, already gridlocked on other security issues, including who would serve as ministers of defense and the interior, were unable to agree at the initial sessions.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta flew to Baghdad on July 11, his first trip since becoming defense secretary, but he didn't make any headway. “I’d like things to move a lot faster here, frankly,” he told U.S. troops then. “Do you want us to stay, don’t you want us to stay? Damn it, make a decision.”

A major complication was the insistence by the Obama administration that the accord go before the Iraqi parliament, something that in the end Iraqi politicians decided was impossible. But whether that restriction was necessary is an open question. Many status-of-forces agreements are signed at the executive level only, particularly in countries without elected legislatures.

But the White House turned the issue over to the State Department’s legal affairs office, reporters in Baghdad were told on Saturday. The lawyers gave a variety of options, but Obama chose the most stringent, approval by Iraq's legislature of a new agreement, citing as precedent that the Iraqi parliament had approved the 2008 agreement, reporters were told.

By mid-September, Iraqi government spokesmen had lowered their goal for a continued presence of U.S. military trainers to about 3,000. But they were also determined not to give in on the American demand for immunity for U.S. troops.

When the Iraqis announced that they'd reached a decision Oct. 4 to request trainers, the figure was "more than 5,000," according to Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, who told reporters Oct. 10 that Iraqi was seeking a "yes or no" response from the Americans. He said there would be no grant of immunity to Americans who stayed behind, however, something the Pentagon had previously said would be required if any troops were to remain.

Whether an earlier Obama intervention would have changed the course of the talks is unknowable.

Shaikhli, the Iraqi spokesman, said his government still is hoping for an agreement that would provide American forces with “legal protection” rather than “immunity,” meaning that the U.S. would retain jurisdiction if a soldier committed a crime against another soldier, but that Iraqi law would hold sway if the soldier were accused of injuring an Iraqi civilian.

Shaikhli said, however, that he didn't think such an agreement should be put before the Iraqi parliament.

“We have to wait until the negotiation is finished,” he said, “and we should not jump to a conclusion.” (Steven Thomma contributed to this report from Washington.)

Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/10/25/128294/as-us-iraqi-troop-talks-faltered.html#ixzz1buBnAOmB

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Quote:

October 26, 2011 12:00 A.M.

American Imperialism? Please
Obama’s decision to leave Iraq should deal a staggering blow to America’s critics.

And so it ends. The United States is leaving Iraq.

I’m solidly in the camp that sees this as a strategic blunder. Iraqi democracy is fragile, and Iran’s desire to undermine it is strong. Also, announcing our withdrawal is a weird way to respond to a foiled Iranian plot to commit an act of war in the U.S. capital. Obviously, I hope I’m wrong and President Obama’s not frittering away our enormous sacrifices in Iraq out of domestic political concerns and diplomatic ineptitude.

Still, there’s an upside. Obama’s decision to leave Iraq should deal a staggering blow to America’s critics at home and abroad.

After all, what kind of empire does this sort of thing?

Critics of U.S. foreign policy have long caterwauled about American “empire.” The term is used as an epithet by both the isolationist Left and Right, as a more coldly descriptive term by such mainstream thinkers as Niall Ferguson and Lawrence Kaplan, and with celebratory enthusiasm by some foreign-policy neoconservatives such as Max Boot.

The charge in recent times has centered on the Middle East, specifically Iraq.

The problem is, contemporary America isn’t an empire, at least not in any conventional or traditional sense.

Your typical empire invades countries to seize their resources, impose political control, and levy taxes. That was true of every empire from the ancient Romans to the Brits and the Soviets.

That was never the case with Iraq. For all the blood-for-oil nonsense, if America wanted Iraq’s oil it could have saved a lot of blood and simply bought it. Saddam Hussein would have been happy to cut a deal if we only lifted our sanctions. Indeed, the U.S. oil industry never lobbied for an invasion, but it did lobby for an end to sanctions. We never levied taxes in Iraq either. Indeed, we’re left holding the tab for the liberation.

And we most certainly are not in political control of Iraq. If we were, we wouldn’t have acquiesced to the Iraqi government’s desire for us to leave. Did Caesar ever cave to the popular will of Gaul?

Some partisans will undoubtedly say that the key difference is that Barack H. Obama, and not George W. Bush, is president.

But this lame objection leaves out the fact that Obama acceded to a timeline drafted by the Bush administration. Moreover, Obama has moved closer to Bush than anybody could have predicted.

Consider Libya. Obama pursued exactly the same policy goal — forcible regime change — that critics of the Iraq War routinely denounced as the heart of American imperialism. There are significant differences between the two adventures, to be sure, but at the conceptual level there’s little difference at all, and neither has much to do with imperialism.

More important, for the imperialism charge to mean anything it needs to describe something larger than mere partisan policy difference. If our imperialism can be turned off and on like a light switch with the mere change of parties, then how imperialistic could we have been in the first place?

The word “regime” has been defined down in recent years to mean nothing more than presidential administrations. “What we need now is not just a regime change in Saddam Hussein and Iraq, but we need a regime change in the United States,” Sen. John Kerry said in 2003.

Regime actually describes an entire system of government. And if the American regime is imperial only when Republicans are in power, then it’s not a serious claim, it’s just a convenient and partisan slander.

In many quarters of the Middle East, the War on Terror is cast as a religiously inspired front for crusader-imperialism. This nonsense overlooks the fact that America has gone to war to save Muslim lives more often than any modern Muslim country has. Under Democrats and Republicans we’ve fought to help Muslims in Somalia, Kosovo, Bosnia, Kuwait, Afghanistan, Iraq, and now Libya. We’ve sought the conversion of no one and — with the exception of Kuwait — we’ve never presented a bill. When asked to leave, we’ve done so.

To say we did these things simply for plunder and power is an insult to all Americans, particularly those who gave their lives in the process.

— Jonah Goldberg is editor-at-large of National Review Online and a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/print/281268

1 Reply

We can't be there forever. That nation has to stand on its own feet, for good or ill.

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@Finn dAbuzz,

I never really thought it had too much to do with oil. The creators of the Iraq war just thought oil would pay for it, they were wrong. There really is no mystery of why those who long wanted to go to war with Iraq. It is all spelled out in the Project For The New American Century website. Or at least it was. It was basically for the strategic foothold for the US to have in that part of the world thinking it would spread to the rest of the middle east. They were wrong once again.

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I am on my phone and don't know how to do links with it but the paper copy of Army Times has an interesting article that should be on the website. In it DOD claims that they are ontrack to get all the material out or turned over to iraq but when you compair what remains to what has been removed in the last year it become clear that this stuff is going to mostly still be in Iraq on Dec 31......DoD is not going to get moved more stuff in 10 weeks then it has in the last 52. It is not clear what the real plan is, it might be that we stay but it might also be a big payday for Iraq as they take control of it.

1 Reply

@revelette,

revelette wrote:

I never really thought it had too much to do with oil. The creators of the Iraq war just thought oil would pay for it, they were wrong. There really is no mystery of why those who long wanted to go to war with Iraq. It is all spelled out in the Project For The New American Century website. Or at least it was. It was basically for the strategic foothold for the US to have in that part of the world thinking it would spread to the rest of the middle east. They were wrong once again.

I agree on the reason, but it remains to be seen if the attempt has failed.

Admittedly one can argue that even if the strategic foothold the US sought was in support of advancing democracy (as opposed to US interests) it took a colossal pair of cajones to march into the country they picked and get it going.

This is why the country that was picked (Iraq) had to provide additional reasons to justify invasion:

1) WMDs threatening the West
2) A vicious despot oppressing his people

We are never going to get agreement in this forum on the validity of #1, but I think we all agree on #2, whether or not we agree it was a reason to invade.

Personally, I have been in favor of the US going to the aid of any and all oppressed people. Whether or not that involves invasion is a case by case question. So, I didn't have a problem with #2.

We can argue, as well, as to whether or not the Iraqi people are better off now than they were before the invasion, or if the cost Iraq incurred for the deposing of Saddam was worth it. Personally, I think they are and it was, but they, rather than any of us, probably can answer that best. I do know, however, that throughout history men and women have died to overthrow tyrants and secure liberty so there must be a value to it that exceeds individual lives.

I don't believe the WMD threat was manufactured for reasons I've stated on numerous occasion in other threads. No need to repeat them here, and so I had no problem with #1

That leaves us with reason #3: strategic foothold.

Even before the advent of Islamist terrorism, the Middle East was of high strategic importance in terms of US interests, and as a result we spent a lot of money and influence in the region.

Once the region gave birth to an existential threat, its strategic importance increased tenfold.

Faced with the prospect of a possibly endless number of retributional (Afghanistan) and preventative (possibly Iran) or preemptive wars, I think a good case can be made that an effort to transform the region from within through the possible spread of democracy would, in the long term, be a less costly solution with greater benefits for the people of the region.

I suppose some consider this just another aspect of Imperialism, but I don't for the reasons Goldberg references in his article.

Some may question if the prospect of continuous military action in the region was and is realistic. I think we only have to look to Libya, Iran and Pakistan to answer that. Syria, Yemen, and even Egypt now are hardly gardens of peace and civility and make the case further.

I appreciate that some people may consider this approach to have been unwise, and even representative of a callous arrogance, but it certainly wasn't crazy, it hasn't proven as yet to be a failure despite Obama's recent decision, and assigning it and its architects an aspect of evil is, to my mind, poor thinking.

Unfortunately, I'm convinced that much of the resistance to the strategic plan and the war itself had more to do with partisan politics than thoughtful consideration. If you disagree with this, just see how easy it has been for the partisan supporters of president Obama to get on board with increasing use of Predator drones to invade sovereign airspace and the invasion of Libya.

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@Finn dAbuzz,

Finn wrote:

Even before the advent of Islamist terrorism, the Middle East was of high strategic importance in terms of US interests, and as a result we spent a lot of money and influence in the region.

I'm having a difficult time with this - you haven't articulated why the Middle East was of strategic importance to the US before Islamist terrorism - up this page a little you posted an article that dismisses the 'blood for oil nonsense' but my understanding was that energy security was the only reason the US had a strategic interest in the region 'pre-terrorism'.

And you gloss over the fact that the advancement of these US strategic interests was a prime cause of Islamist terrorism.

Quote:

This is why the country that was picked (Iraq) had to provide additional reasons to justify invasion:

1) WMDs threatening the West
2) A vicious despot oppressing his people

My number 3 was the Saudis seeing Hussein as a destabilising influence in the region and a threat to their 'strategic interests' - and them having substantial leverage with the USA's 'strategic interests' re 'energy security'

1 Reply

@hawkeye10,

I am not finding a copy on ArmyTimes.com so from Oct 31 ArmyTimes page 22

In Iraq OCT 1

40,000 troops, 860,300 pieces of Equipment, 27, 500 of the 860,300 wheeled

Sep 2010-oct 2011 removals from DOD stocks in Iraq

1.52 million pieces removed

2.43 million pieces gifted to Iraq

128.5 million pounds of material sold as scrap

-----------------------------------

1,520,000/395 days = 3848 pieces of equipment shipped per day

3848 x 90 days = 346,397 of the 860,300 can be expected to be removed.

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@hingehead,

I'm sorry if I wasn't clear. The prior strategic importance was of course oil, as it remains today.

Since no one would give a rat's ass about the region if it didn't contain oil, you can make a good argument that anything and everything done there has oil as a root cause, but I think there is a difference between an interest in seeing that oil is produced and sold and an interest in seizing it.

The Iraqi invasion was not a venture designed to seize Iraqi oil supplies for the US and its allies. Nor was in a venture to obtain quantities of oil at greatly reduced prices or even oil that couldn't be purchased elsewhere

I doubt it, but I suppose the US could free itself from all further threats from Islamists by simply vacating, in toto, the region and not buying Arab oil, but that would never happen, and why should it? The Arabs have oil, they want to sell it to Americans and we want to buy it.

Our interests in the region extend to ensuring it remains a place that can and will sell us its oil for the profit and benefit of the Arab people, as opposed to taking possession of that oil.

If my pursuing my interests engenders an irrational response, I'm not going to accept blame for that response.

Because the Islamists are able to draw a connection between what they want and America as a barrier to them achieving it doesn't legitimize their acts of terrorism or necessarily indict the pursuit of American interests that fashions the barrier.

If you want to view the situation strictly in terms of interest and avoid all value judgments, American interests interfered with Islamist interests, and so Islamists took steps they felt would remove that interference. They failed, but they forced the Americans to factor the Islamist interests into its strategy to advance and protect its own (Iraq). In response, the Islamists formulated a strategy intended to counter America's (Flooding Iraq with al-Qaida foot soldiers). They knew that if America was successful with its Iraqi strategy and democracy spread throughout the region, their interests would suffer.

American didn't perforce designate Islamists as counter to its interests (We funded them in Afghanistan), but when Islamists decided America was counter to their interests, and acted upon it, then Islamists became counter to American interests, and had to be dealt with.

You can, if you like, reintroduce value judgments and decide that the interests of the Islamists were somehow morally superior to those of America because they happen to live in the region, but I don't.

Yes, Saudi interests played a role, but truth be told none of the Arab states were sorry to see Saddam go. They may have had something to fear from a strategy to establish a democratic foothold, but their fear of Saddam was much more immediate. I'm sure they figured they would deal with the new Iraq all in good time.

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The 'vicious despot' was our government's friend, until it suited their purpose to dislike him. It's bullshit to claim that was the real reason. It is also bullshit that there were weapons of mass destruction. After the first war, we had absolute control over their air space. If there had been anything going on we would have seen it and squelched it immediately.

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@edgarblythe,

As I said, some will think otherwise.

1 Reply

@Finn dAbuzz,

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@edgarblythe,

edgarblythe wrote:

The 'vicious despot' was our government's friend, until it suited their purpose to dislike him. It's bullshit to claim that was the real reason. It is also bullshit that there were weapons of mass destruction. After the first war, we had absolute control over their air space. If there had been anything going on we would have seen it and squelched it immediately.

We probably would have had Israel bomb the sh*t out of any WMD sites and allow the Israelis to take complete credit (or blame) for it, as though it had been their own idea all along.

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@Finn dAbuzz,

Quote:

1) WMDs threatening the West
2) A vicious despot oppressing his people

The first has been proven so many times to be false that I can't even believe you bring it up with a (I assume) a straight face

The second, yes he oppressed his people but at the time he was relatively contained and he posed no threat urgent threat which in any way justified the war at all, which also has been proven. The time to act for gassing the kurds and Shiites would have been at the time not years and years later.

I don't know why you guys just don't admit you were wrong on that one and let it go from a debate standpoint.

1 Reply

@revelette,

Quote:

We are never going to get agreement in this forum on the validity of #1, but I think we all agree on #2, whether or not we agree it was a reason to invade.

Personally, I have been in favor of the US going to the aid of any and all oppressed people. Whether or not that involves invasion is a case by case question. So, I didn't have a problem with #2.

We can argue, as well, as to whether or not the Iraqi people are better off now than they were before the invasion, or if the cost Iraq incurred for the deposing of Saddam was worth it. Personally, I think they are and it was, but they, rather than any of us, probably can answer that best. I do know, however, that throughout history men and women have died to overthrow tyrants and secure liberty so there must be a value to it that exceeds individual lives.

I don't believe the WMD threat was manufactured for reasons I've stated on numerous occasion in other threads. No need to repeat them here, and so I had no problem with #1

That leaves us with reason #3: strategic foothold.

You've missed my point.

I've no interest in rehashing arguments about WMD intelligence.

When he was gassing Kurds and Shiites would have been a better time to act, and irrespective of the scope of the Islamist threat we should have, but, obviously, in our leaders' minds that alone was not a compelling enough reason to attack Iraq militarily.

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Iraq Troop Draw-down by EoY 2011?

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