The coming withdrawal from Iraq

Spencer Ackerman notes an AP article and finds independent confirmation the information:

The United States plans to withdraw most of its troops from Iraq by August 2010, 19 months after President Barack Obama's inauguration, according to administration officials. The withdrawal plan would fulfill one of Obama's central campaign pledges, albeit a little more slowly than he promised. He said he would withdraw troops within 16 months, roughly one brigade a month from the time of his inauguration. ...

The 19-month strategy is a compromise between commanders and advisers who are worried that security gains could backslide in Iraq and those who think the bulk of U.S. combat work is long since done.

This would leave 30 to 50 thousand troops in Iraq, although the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) mandates that most of them get out by the end of 2011.  There's room for negotiation there, but Obama has said he'll abide by the agreement and I think domestic Iraqi politics place a severe upper limited on long term U.S. presence. 

Ackerman isn't particularly worried about the three month delay and thinks it's fairly good politics by making a fixed withdrawal look like a compromise.  That's probably true from at least a domestic U.S. perspective.  From the Iraqi perspective, we probably want to front load that a bit.  I've read the suggestion that making a large withdrawal gesture prior to the referendum on the SOFA would ease the passage of the agreement which would mean we wouldn't need to withdrawal even more rapidly. 

Beyond the lack of details on scheduling, there's one major error in the AP piece.  Specifically the implication that some Obama advisors "think the bulk of U.S. combat work is long since done."  That's the sort of naive formulation that Tom Ricks tends to push back against, and rightfully so.  There's still a lot of fighting left.  But I part company with Ricks and this Joshua Keating post on Ricks' blog.  The argument for withdrawal isn't that the fighting is done, but that the U.S. role in the fighting is largely done.  Why?  Because as the SOFA debate show the Iraqis are ready for us to start leaving.

Photograph by Jamesdale10 used under a creative commons license.

Comments

[Jeremy]

Agreed. From my understanding (not having really kept on top of it the last couple weeks) is that the Iraqi's have been ready for us to leave pretty much from the moment we got there. The real question is whether or not US presence there is hindering or helping build domestic policy and/or infrastructure. The other side of the coin is where is Osama Bin Laden? =P

[Greg Sanders]

Probably somewhere in NW Pakistan. Or dead. :P

I think there was some definite opposition from the moment we got there. Quick effective improvements in conditions might have turned that around, but I wouldn't necessarily bet on it. One exception is Kurdish areas, where we're still fairly welcome, but they're a minority of the total population.