Why We Worry

In an update to my post yesterday, I mentioned this quote from the Prime Minister of Iraq, Nuri al-Maliki:

There is an agreement actually reached, reached between the two parties on a fixed date which is the end of 2011 to end any foreign presence on Iraqi soil.

So, again, Maliki has basically endorsed Barack Obama’s timetable for withdrawal.

On its face, this seems like unambiguously good news. A majority of US citizens, the majority party in the US Congress, and a majority of the Iraqi people want US forces out Iraq, and now those constituencies have official sanction from the Iraqi government to act on that desire for withdrawal.

But there are problems. For one, the Iraqi government isn’t fully sovereign or independent. In essence, we still hold all the cards. And in an era when the US Congress is toothless and the president is King, no one has the power to get us out of Iraq that isn’t named George W. Bush. As we all should know by now, Bush has no intention of leaving Iraq, that’s why his administration has tried to avoid any talk of timetables. Instead, Bush has endorsed an “aspirational time horizon,” which presumably is a timetable that has no set dates (wrap your head around that one). McCain, his potential successor, has similar feelings.

On the Iraqi side, antiwar Americans presumably have an aly in Maliki, but politicians should rarely be taken at their word. Maliki’s endorsement of a withdrawal timeline only assures one thing: The US occupation is politically unpopular in Iraq. With elections coming by the end of the year, Maliki has to at least pretend to want us to leave. But 2011 is a long way away and without firm commitments on both sides, there is no guarantee we aren’t just looking at another empty promise (aka Friedman Unit).

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