Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s cabinet submitted a draft law to parliament calling for a referendum on the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) to coincide with the January 2010 parliamentary election. The SOFA was originally passed in November 2008 by the Iraqi parliament. Alongside it was a second law, the Political Reform Document, which also [...]
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It’s Ralph Peters, so there’s plenty wrong with this column, but this part in particular stuck out to me:
Really? We should be concerned that hostage takers in the future will…demand face time with Bill Clinton or Tina Fey? Is that really such an exorbitant ransom to pay in order to spare two American women from an unthinkably brutal prison system, wherein prisoners are so deprived of food that they sometimes resort to cannibalism when the opportunity arises (that is, when they aren’t lucky enough to catch a rat and eat it raw on the spot)? Or would a Tina Fey photo op be too high a price for the life of a soldier held by the Taliban? Wait, maybe I’m asking the wrong question - Ralph Peters would rather see the soldier executed regardless. In another example of the pushback against Colonel Reese’s call for a slightly accelerated timetable for withdrawal from Iraq, The New Republic’s Michael Crowley makes an appeal to the "tar baby conundrum," as I termed it back in March 2008:
Here is Crowley on why Obama should reconsider his plans for pulling US forces out of Iraq:
Of course, Crowley was amongst the chorus of voices issuing warnings back in 2007 that withdrawal in the midst of such heightened civil war violence was too risky. Only now, according to Crowley, we can’t leave because of the relative peace. Either way, we stay. [...] As is customary with the ebb and flow of the Iraq withdrawal debate, Col. Timothy Reese’s widely disseminated memo calling for a slightly accelerated timeline for removing troops from Iraq has provoked responses from those that warn against deviating from the original timeline (at least in terms of getting out ahead of schedule), and those that advocate pushing the ultimate withdrawal date back a decade, or longer (as necessary). The latter link is from a Barbara Walter column in the Los Angeles Times which argues that the risks of a civil war re-erupting in Iraq should compel us to maintain a troop presence in Iraq for "an additional five to 10 years" beyond the 2011 deadline imposed by the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) previously agreed to by the governments of Iraq and the United States. In making her case, Walter undermines the narrative of the successful Surge. Recall, the Surge was supposed to create space for the various warring factions to forge a lasting political reconciliation. Its critics, however, have claimed that the Surge has only managed to freeze conflicts in place, conflicts which would be thawed out and revisited at a later date (and even then, the Surge was only able to achieve this with the help of extenuating circumstances):
While she may have a point about the likelihood of various civil wars reigniting, it’s less clear that there has ever been even a compromise agreement to "share power in Iraq." That power sharing agreement, the elusive ‘political reconciliation’ that was, again, the primary goal of the Surge, has yet to emerge. The current governing pact has never really had widespread buy-in from various insurgent and insurgent-friendly groups – hence the need to expand beyond the four corners of the current political set-up, amend the constitution and reach accords on various other key issues such as federalism/centralism, control of oil, incorporation of Sunnis into the security forces, etc. A senior U.S. military official and adviser to the Iraqi military’s Baghdad command, Col. Timothy R. Reese, wrote a rather blunt memo that has recently found the light of day (copy here). In the memo, Reese argues that the U.S. should accelerate its withdrawal from Iraq based on the following factors: we have already accomplished what was possible for us to achieve militarily, the way forward involves Iraqi issues best-suited for Iraqi solutions (or not) and, further, that our continued presence is actually increasing tension, resistance, risk to our troops and the potential for a serious rift in relations. Reese argues that we have lost leverage over the Iraqi government, and the ability to influence the political/military landscape. Political reconciliation – the endgame that the Surge was supposed to secure – is backsliding, as corruption and self-dealing have settled in as the norm: On July 16, 2009 Al-Hayat newspaper reported that Moqtada al-Sadr visited Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the leader of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC) in his Tehran hospital. Sadr said he was interested in rejoining the United Iraqi Alliance, which the Sadrists left in September 2007. The new alliance is due to be announced later this month according to a Supreme Council member. In February 2009 Sadr issued a statement saying that he would come back to the Alliance as long as it was renamed, the SIIC was no longer leading it, and that it was non-sectarian. Those talks fell apart in May when the Sadrists said they would run independently in the January 2010 parliamentary vote. The change in the Sadrists’ position could be due to the influence of Iran, which is applying strong pressure upon the leading Shiite parties to re-unite and run together in the next round of balloting in Iraq. One of the main goals of Tehran is to ensure friendly Shiite rule in Iraq so that it never becomes a rival again. Following this Iran wants the main Shiite parties to be united during elections, so they stay in power. In 2005 Iran helped put together the United Iraqi Alliance, and gave them printing presses, advisors, broadcast equipment, and stuffed ballot boxes. Since the January 2009 provincial elections, Iran has been pushing for the Alliance to be revived. In January, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki ran his own State of Law List, which trumped the Supreme Council in most of southern Iraq. Iran was afraid of further fracturing by the Shiites, and began pressuring them to run together in 2010. Mike Hanna is on point, as usual: The United States took an important step yesterday toward leaving Iraq by moving combat troops out of Iraqi population centers in anticipation of the June 30 deadline specified in the U.S.-Iraq Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA). This redeployment has focused attention on Iraq’s current security situation [...] |
Blake Hounshell (aka praktike), our co-founder and main man, is managing editor of Foreign Policy magazine. He's now reporting on the Egyptian Revolution from Cairo. 
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