In Iraq, a useful collapse

Sacramento Bee: The United States and Iraq have abandoned efforts to conclude a long-term troop agreement before the end of the Bush presidency, reports the Washington Post. The collapse of these talks is a good thing.

Now the two governments can work on a bridge, a “temporary operating protocol,” that doesn’t tie the hands of the U.S. president who will be elected in November.

The Bush administration had been pushing a “sole executive agreement” that would have created long-term binding commitments on the United States — commitments that would not involve the Senate in its constitutional role to “advise and consent.” Executive agreements are reported to Congress but do not require formal Senate approval.

U.N. mandate

The Bush administration described this executive agreement as “something like” a status of forces agreement that would replace the existing U.N. Security Council mandate that ends in December (and which the Iraqis don’t want to extend because of its limits on Iraqi sovereignty).

But there would have been a big difference.

Typically a status of forces agreement after a U.S. military occupation, such as in Japan after World War II or South Korea after the Korean conflict of the 1950s, is an integral part of a formal treaty of mutual cooperation and security. Such a treaty outlines the stationing of U.S. forces and military bases and all matters related to the presence of U.S. forces within the host country. Most important, because it is a treaty, it goes through a Senate approval process.

The Bush administration’s attempt to negotiate a long-term executive agreement with Iraq was purely and simply an effort to evade congressional involvement and keep Bush Iraq policies alive long beyond his presidency.