Agreement sets firm date for U.S. withdrawal from Iraq

Agreement sets firm date for U.S. withdrawal from Iraq

For years, President George W. Bush vetoed and threatened to veto legislation proposed by Democrats that would have set target dates for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. Withdrawal dates would encourage the enemy, Americans were told. Terrorists would simply wait out the withdrawal and then topple Iraq’s government.

It is a testament to how much things have changed on various fronts that when the Iraqi Parliament approved a security pact with the United States that calls for the last American soldier to leave Iraq by Jan. 1, 2012, President Bush hailed it as an affirmation of the progress Iraq has made on the road to democracy.

Something for all three

The pact was seen as a major political victory for Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who managed to put together a coalition that gave the measure a margin of victory of more than 4 to 1.

Approval of the security agreement would allow President Bush to plausibly claim as he leaves office that victory — or at least an end — is in sight.

It’s also a break for President-elect Barack Obama because the timetable is close to his own campaign promise to have American combat units out by mid-2010. And as forces are freed up, it makes them available for Afghanistan, where Defense Secretary Robert Gates has called for 20,000 more troops.

The deal calls for U.S. forces to begin pulling out of Iraq’s cities next summer and to be gone from the country altogether by the end of 2011. Iraq has the option of asking some specialized units — training, logistics, air support — to stay on. But the vote and President Bush’s endorsement, clearly recognizes Iraq’s sovereignty. If Iraq says “go,” it would be difficult for the United States to do anything but leave.

The vote was 149-35 with 14 abstentions. The “no” votes were almost exclusively from supporters of the radical Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who vigorously opposed the agreement, as did Iran and Syria.

An agreement was necessary because the United Nation’s authorization under which U.S. troops remained in Iraq expires next month. By the time the January 2012 withdrawl date is reached, U.S. troops will have been in Iraq for nearly nine years, exceeding by about six months U.S. involvement in Vietnam.

At one time, there was a move in the U.S. Congress to treat the security agreement as a treaty and demand Senate ratification. That would seem unlikely at this point.

Possible pitfalls

The agreement will present challenges for the Obama administration. There will be questions of legal immunity from Iraqi prosecution for U.S. troops who remain in Iraq. U.S. forces will be restricted in their right to search homes and detain suspects. Military operations will have to be coordinated with Iraqi authorities. There will be political and logistical challenges in extracting U.S. equipment from the war zone. While the obviously expectation is that Iraq will remain an independent democracy, there are limits to what materiel U.S. troops can or should leave behind.

But as of today, the agreement provides the clearest road map yet for the United States to extract itself from a war that has gone on longer than U.S. involvement in World War II and that has cost more than 4,500 Americans their lives and left five times that many severely wounded.