Bush’s gift to Obama

The dazzling incompetence of the Bush administration left Barack Obama with a long list of problems to fix. Yet Bush did provide his successor with one unambiguous gift: the 2008 Status of Forces Agreement with Iraq. By negotiating a timetable for the orderly removal of U.S. forces, Bush gave Obama a "get of Iraq free" pass, a clear path to ending Bush’s most expensive mistake. It is an opportunity that Obama should not squander.
 
As part of that agreement, U.S. troops are to be withdrawn from Iraqi cities today and deployed at nearby military bases, as a first step toward their eventual withdrawal. But does this course of action still make sense, given the recent increase in violence, a development that many people fear heralds a return to pre-"surge" levels of violence? The answer is yes. Despite these worrisome developments, the United States should "stay on course" out of Iraq.

The grim reality is that the United States is no longer in a position to guide Iraq’s political future; that task is up to the citizens of Iraq. America’s armed forces are extremely good at deterring large-scale conventional aggression and at winning conventional military engagements, but they are neither designed for nor adept at occupying and governing foreign countries whose character and culture we do not understand, especially when these societies are deeply divided. To say this takes nothing away from the sacrifices borne by our armed forces and their families; they were asked to do a job for which they were not trained or equipped, and which may have been impossible from the start.
 
Although often touted as a great success, the fate of the 2007 "surge" reveals the limits of U.S. influence clearly. Although it did lower sectarian violence, the surge did not lead to significant political reconciliation between the contending Sunni, Shiite, and Kurdish groups. The "surge" was thus a tactical success but a strategic failure, and that failure is instructive. If increased force levels, improved counterinsurgency tactics, and our best military leadership could not "turn the corner" politically in Iraq, then prolonging our occupation beyond the timetable outlined in the SOFA agreement makes no sense. No matter how long we stay, Iraq is likely to face similar centrifugal forces, and our presence is doing little to reduce them.
 
Equally important, prolonging our stay in Iraq involves real costs, apart from the billions of extra dollars we will spend between now and the planned withdrawal in 2011. Our armed forces have been stretched thin, and are badly in need of retraining, re-equipping, and recovery. Remaining bogged down in Iraq also diverts time and attention from other strategic issues and continues to supply anti-American forces with ideological ammunition about our "imperial" tendencies. Delaying the agreed-upon withdrawal would thus be yet another strategic misstep.
 
The good news — of a sort — is that the Iraqi government and the Iraqi people increasingly agree that it is time for us to go. The Maliki government drove a hard bargain with Bush over the SOFA agreement, insisting on a shorter deadline than Bush originally wanted and demanding greater restrictions on U.S. activities during the drawdown. The Maliki government did this because it understood that taking a tough line with Washington was popular with the Iraqi people, and it hasn’t budged from that tough line despite continued internal problems.
 
It is of course possible — even likely — that violence will increase as U.S. forces draw down, and there is still some danger of open civil war. That will be a tragedy for which Americans do bear some responsibility, insofar as we opened Pandora’s Box when we invaded in 2003. But that danger will exist no matter how long we remain, and our presence there may in fact be delaying the hard bargaining and political compromises that will ultimately have to occur before Iraq is finally stable.
 
In any case, that task should now be left to Iraqis themselves. Historian Edward Gibbon once observed that "There is nothing more adverse to nature and reason than to hold in obedience remote countries and foreign nations, in opposition to their inclination and interest." A wise admonition, and one that President Obama should keep in mind as he leads the United States out of the Iraq debacle. Getting out may not be easy but way ahead is obvious: just stick to the agreement that the Bush administration already signed.