Cole in Salon: "We're Really Leaving Iraq"
My column is out in Salon.com, We're really leaving Iraq: Some Iraq war critics are fretting about Obama's speech on Friday, and his plan to stay a little longer. But here's why there's no reason for alarm.
Excerpt:
'In particular, Obama's plan to leave 35,000 to 50,000 support troops in Iraq between August 31, 2010 and December 31, 2011, has made the left of his party as nervous as a vegan in a butcher shop. Congressional leaders like Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi have urged that the number be reduced to 15,000. . . So has Obama been reduced to "Bush Lite" on the Tigris? In his first detailed policy speech on Iraq, did he renege on his commitment to get out -- or did he skillfully calibrate his plan to avoid any of the booby traps Mesopotamia might still hold for an American president? '
Read the whole thing.
End/ (Not Continued)
posted by Juan Cole @ 3/02/2009 12:14:00 AM
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6 Comments:
I agree with your assessment.
The US has in the past tried to call the occupation something else or hid their intention behind silly language: "we will stay an Iraq as long as necessary, and not a day longer" without saying necessary for what. Then Bush came clean when he told us that the ~US will have bases for decades to come, but that's OK because the Japanese and Germans let the US stay.
Bush also promoted Hakim and the two Kurdish warlords who fully agreed with indefinite occupation to help them loot the country.
Obama has told the Iraqis that the US no longer supports such scum, but will deal with Iraq as a nation with proper institutions. This dramatic switch is even more important than the troop plans, since it signifies that the US has given up on taming Iraq.
There is still the problem of the base-disguised-as-an-embassy. The US appears to want a huge civilian presence, which will require tens of thousands of troops to defend them. This is the still remaining problem which we must all concentrate on.
I own a nice bridge in Bagdhad which I would like to sell to Prof. Cole or anyone who agrees with him about Obama "really leaving Iraq"
Now I really try to be polite, which is not easy given the topic, the author and his previous posts about how it would be bad if USA leave Iraq (bad for Iraqis and Chinese, you know)
If Obama is really serious about ending the occupation, then why is he silent about the 100,000 U.S.- funded mercenaries who are currently in Iraq?
How does he plan to address the status of the private contractors in 19 months when U.S. troop’s are pulled out of Iraq?
Prof Cole's caveats contained within his piece represent reluctant soft imperialism, but imperialism nonetheless. American needs to get out of the Mideast entirely; as a prominent conservative of the 1960s, James Burnham, said, we have no interest in the Mideast except oil and whoever controls it will sell it to us at market prices. Once upon a time conservatives were not controlled by The Lobby and were less inclined to intervention than soft imperialists on the left.
I don't believe that Obama will leave Iraq - and my definition of "Leave" is that less than 5,000 US troops will be on Iraqi soil, and there will be no foreign mercenaries on Iraqi soil that are on the US payroll directly or indirectly.
If they wanted to leave, they would just up and leave.
What Obama has done is extend the illegal US occupation from six years to three years.
There will be blood.
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Doctor Cole,
As often as you go up to bat, it’s expected that you’ll hit a foul ball once in a while.
Such is the case with your latest SALON article.
President Obama did NOT declare an end to the Iraq War. He sort of declared that it would end at a specific point in the distant future. More precisely, he offered a prediction that combat operations would end in August 2010, but spoke the prediction like a certainty, with the understanding that a lot of things (like the sun coming up tomorrow) could derail that prediction.
He DID declare that he would leave a residual force in Iraq that was more powerful than the Army of Occupation left behind in Germany in 1945. Now, the US only occupied a portion of Germany, maybe Ľ the size of Iraq, but the populations of the two occupied areas are comparable.
The Iraq occupation force, after August 2010, will be less than 20% of the size of the initial occupation force in the American Zone in Germany. But with modern armaments, the Iraq occupation force has at least 20 times the firepower (including close air support only 30 minutes away) and at least 10 times the capacity to impose control on the civilian population.
You say that there is no way that the Iraqi military could provide security for national elections in December 2009. Based on what ? Based on the assessment of Dave Petraeus, whose political life depends on the “Iraqi government” that we prop up being helplessly dependent on our protection. You DO remember where Petraeus came from, and why ?
The weakest part of your article is where you accepted the lies that Iraqi security forces cannot possibly perform or get performed these essential functions:
• logistical support;
• Surveillance of frontiers;
• air force (close air support;)
• navy (counter-smuggling;)
• counter-terrorism weapons; and
• intelligence.
You haven’t been reading Iraqslogger.com. The US Army acquisition operation in Iraq, JCC-I, has hired contractors to perform every single one of these functions.
If WE can pay DynCorp and MPRI to do this stuff, why can’t the Iraqi Government ?
Obama's plan didn’t just vindicate Republican Iraq policies, it IS the Bush plan, the Bush SOFA. He didn’t compromise; he caved.
Finally, “I intend to leave” is not a firm pledge to leave.
Just for laughs, compare “He was attempting to provide for an orderly withdrawal that will ensure that U.S. troops are not drawn back in by a subsequent security collapse” to the Bush rationale for staying in Iraq for the last 5 years.
Don’t get discouraged, though. We who visit your blog almost all are cheering for you. Compare his earliest campaign promises (the later ones were more “nuanced”) to this speech. That’s the equivalent of batting practice. Then come back out swinging for the upper deck.
Your admiring student
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