Should U.S. troops stay in Iraq?
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said he wants U.S. troops out of the country on schedule:
'But Mr. Maliki said the only way for any of the remaining 50,000 or so American soldiers to stay beyond 2011 would be for the two nations to negotiateâ??with the approval of Iraq's Parliamentâ??a new Status of Forces Agreement, or SOFA, similar to the one concluded in 2008.That deal took a year of protracted negotiations in the face of vehement opposition from many among Mr. Maliki's own Shiite constituency, and no repeat is expected.
Mr. Maliki and U.S. officials have refrained for the most part from raising the issue publicly during the months of political wrangling in Baghdad, as Mr. Maliki negotiated with potential coalition partners, many of whom have adamantly opposed an extended U.S. stay.
A senior official in President Barack Obama's administration said Washington was "on track" to withdraw all its remaining soldiers in Iraq by the end of next year. That's the final milestone in the security agreement, following the reduction in American troop levels to below 50,000 in August and the pullout of U.S. soldiers from most Iraqi inner cities in June 2009. "The prime minister is exactly right," said the senior official.
During the interview, Mr. Maliki said he was heartened by America's "commitment" to honoring the agreements it reached with Iraq, and he laughed approvingly when told that U.S. Ambassador James F. Jeffrey keeps a frayed copy of the so-called Strategic Framework Agreement in his leather briefcase.
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Max Boot is worried:
'If such a wholesale departure of U.S. troops does occur, Iraq will face stiff challenges. It may very well surmount those obstacles, but I would be more confident in its future, as I have said before, if there were a substantial and longterm American presence just as there has been in Germany, Japan, and South Korea.'
The trouble is, unlike Germany, South Korea and Japan, Iraq has waged a fierce insurgency to eject U.S. forces. And, unlike Germany, South Korea and Japan, America's security presence isn't simply to keep rival nation states at bay, but to help shore up Iraq's internal security.
We may know better than Maliki what is required to protect his country - and clearly Boot is right that Iraq is extremely fragile right now - but the insistence on replacing Saddam's tyranny with what is ostensibly a democracy carried with it the obvious risk that the democratic wishes of a sovereign Iraq would not align with the neoconservative vision of stationing U.S. troops inside the country for half a century.