Iraq SOFA Passed. Troops Will Stay.
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Foreign Policy, Good Decisions, Iraq
Well, they didn’t wait until the last minute to pass this thing, and thank god for that. The last thing Bush needed was not getting this agreement in place and having to deal with troops being in Iraq illegally.
BAGHDAD – Iraq’s Cabinet on Sunday approved a security pact with the United States that will allow American forces to stay in Iraq for three years after their U.N. mandate expires at the end of the year.The decision followed months of difficult negotiations and, pending parliamentary approval, will remove a major point of contention between the two allies. Parliament’s deputy speaker, Khalid al-Attiyah, said he expected the 275-member legislature to begin debating the document this week and vote on it by Nov. 24.
Government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said all but one of the 28 Cabinet ministers present in Sunday’s meeting, in addition to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, voted for the pact by a show of hands.
What was the hold up? Well, it was some pretty basic stuff, and I’m glad we gave Iraqis these concessions given that this is their country…
It provides for the departure of U.S. forces from Iraq by the end of 2011 and gives Iraq the right to try U.S. soldiers and defense contractors in the case of serious crimes committed off-duty and off-base. It also prohibits the U.S. from using Iraqi territory to attack Iraq’s neighbors, like Syria and Iran.
So no more attacks on Syria?
We shall see…
This entry was posted on Sunday, November 16th, 2008 and is filed under Foreign Policy, Good Decisions, Iraq. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
November 16th, 2008 at 12:52 pm
November 16th, 2008 at 3:41 pm
Wow a post on Iraq. Haven’t seen one in a while. Did anybody notice that the Iraq war is over and we won? Michael Yon did, and he is probably the most credible, unbiased source on all things Iraq.
I wonder if President Obama acknowledges that the Iraq war is over and we won. Will he give credit to the previous administration for getting their act together and winning the Iraq war? When he talks to our military personel as their commander in chief, will he thank them for winning the Iraq war? Does he realize that the timetable for withdrawal is completely administrative since the Iraq war has been won? One more time. The Iraq war is over and we won.
Justin, do you think the Iraq war is over and we won? Just curious.
November 16th, 2008 at 7:18 pm
Jimmy, I hope you and I can both agree that this isn’t one of those questions you can answer either yes or no.
Technically the war was over after the initial invasion. Then we simply failed to secure the peace and so some secondary quasi-war started against no specific enemy. Yes, people said we were fighting al Qaeda, but you and I both know it wasn’t just aQ. It was disgruntled former soldiers, religious militias, etc.
Thankfully we changed strategies and the violence has gone down, but until we hand Iraq back over to the Iraqis, we won’t know how this country is gonna go. Sectarian anger is still very much alive and it’s not just going to go away because we put up concrete barriers dividing neighborhoods. Because those barriers will eventually have to come down. And I’ve been making that point year after year after year.
And when everybody from David Petraeus to Michael Ware say that using terms like “winning” is not a good way to describe positive movement in Iraq.
I know that’s not the answer you wanted, but that’s Iraq.
November 16th, 2008 at 9:49 pm
Acceptable!
I would say we need to change our expectations of what victory and loss mean going forward, since wars just aren’t going to be settled the way they were in the past. So many pundits were saying the war was unwinnable, or there was no military solution or as Harry Reid said, the war was lost. Well, those are absolutes too, and they weren’t being nuanced when it came to their opposition, but they were all proven to be wrong.
Our mission objectives were not to force an unconditional surrender by those militia and jihadist groups, but just about all of our mission objectives that we did have – even from 2003 – have been achieved.
If patreaus and ware are not comfortable with using “win” or “victory” to describe the situation, its because they still have to field a team in a violent game while the clock is still running, even though its nearing the end of the 4th quarter and we are up 72 to 3.
November 18th, 2008 at 11:10 am
I’d say that petraeus just doesn’t want the gov’t to cut funding and lose for them their hard earned progress, so they demonstrate the positive, and drive home the importance of sustaining the effort.