WASHINGTON — By agreeing to a fixed deadline for the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq, President George W. Bush contradicted years of promises that he would never agree to anything but a “conditions-based” plan for phasing out the American military role there. But he may also have given President-elect Barack Obama more flexibility in fulfilling his campaign promise to bring the troops home.
Obama pledged during the campaign to withdraw the remaining U.S. combat troops in 16 months, at roughly the rate of one combat brigade a month. The plan tentatively approved in Baghdad on Monday would essentially give Obama until the end of 2011 to pull out all U.S. forces, while also putting the stamp of the Bush administration approval on the idea that there needs to be an ironclad deadline for troop removal.
“It greatly eases the pressure on (Obama) to meet a fixed abstract schedule for U.S. withdrawals,” said Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
The agreement signed Monday by U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker and Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari needs approval by the Iraqi parliament. And the Obama transition team is signaling that it wants Congress to review the pact, though not necessarily approve it.
“President-elect Obama believes it is critical that a status-of-forces agreement that ensures sufficient protections for our men and women in uniform is reached before the end of the year. We look forward to reviewing the final text of the agreement,” said Brooke Anderson, a policy adviser and spokeswoman on national security.
But others familiar with the team’s thinking said there is little question that the agreement should relieve Obama of the serious problem he would have inherited when the U.N. mandate that authorizes U.S. forces to operate in Iraq expires Dec. 31. The replacement agreement appears to give both sides what they need: for the United States, protection for its troops; for Iraq, a clear signal that the U.S. military presence will end on a specific date.
Bush administration officials acknowledged Monday that the timetable laid out in the final agreement is not what the president wanted originally but said that they could go along with it because of a decline in violence in Iraq in the past year. “The security considerations on the ground have improved so much and the Iraqi security forces have improved so much that you can now set a date and be comfortable with it,” said White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
