[To put this in context: Cole thinks this is basically Obama's sole foreign policy victory, to be weighed against things getting palapably worse in Israel/Palestine & Afghanistan. But he thinks some credit is due here.]
http://www.juancole.com/2010/01/one-year-later-did-obama-win-iraq-war.html
Informed Comment
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
One Year Later: Did Obama Win the Iraq War?
<snip>
But Obama's biggest practical foreign policy success has been in
keeping to his withdrawal timetable in Iraq. Most observers have paid
too little attention to this, among his most important decisions. When
he became president, his top generals, including Gen. David Petraeus
and Gen. Ray Odierno, reportedly came to him and attempted to convince
him to modify the withdrawal timeline adopted by the Iraqi parliament
as part of the Status of Forces Agreement negotiated shortly before he
took office. They did not want US troops to cease patrolling
independently in mid-June 2009. They did not want to get all combat
troops out by summer 2010. They wanted to finesse the agreement.
Reclassify combat troops under some other heading, they said.
Overturning the SOFA or dragging Washington's feet about it would have
produced rage in Baghdad. It had the potential for undermining the
government of PM Nouri al-Maliki, and for reinvigorating both Sunni
Arab extremists and Shiite radical movements such as the Mahdi Army. It
would have made other Arab regimes suspicious of US motives. It would
have been a mistake as epochal as the Bush administration's decision to
build up a heavy US military footprint in Afghanistan, which restarted
the war there and provoked a major insurgency that continues to this
day. In Iraq, a country crawling with armed, nationalistically minded
groups and dotted with arms depots, such a move would have been a
catastrophe. Obama did the right thing. He overruled his generals and
began returning to Iraq its sovereignty.
This issue is important regionally because polling shows that Arab
publics say that ending the US military presence in Iraq is the single
most important thing the US could do to improve its relations with that
region. What they saw as US atrocities in Iraq motivated many of the
terrorists active after 2003. Ending the US military role there will
bring a sea change. (Only 4% of Arabs say that they are exercised by
the issue of Afghanistan, so that is not the same thing in their eyes).
Over Gen. Ray Odierno's objections, in June 30, 2009, US troops ceased
independently patrolling major Iraqi cities. Iraqis celebrated this
change as 'sovereignty day.'
[EMBED]
The Iraqi military and police, over which Prime Minister Nouri
al-Maliki had largely gained control, proved able to keep order about
as well as had their American and British colleagues. In July, 2009,
with the US no longer patrolling, attacks and deaths declined by a
third, and went on down from there. Despite two dramatic bombing waves
in the capital, in August and November, the situation has in most
places calmed down on an everyday basis. Flashpoints such as Mosul and
Kirkuk remain, but had been violent when the US military was there,
too.
Most Americans do not realize that US troops seldom patrol or engage in
combat in Iraq anymore, accounting for why none were killed in hostile
action in December. The total number of US troops in Iraq has fallen
from a maximum of 160,000 during the Bush administration's 'surge' to
about 110,000. After the early March parliamentary elections, another
big withdrawal will begin, bringing then number down to 50,000 or so
non-combat troops by September 1.
Critics of Obama often charge him with failing to end the Iraq War. But
there is no longer an Iraq War. There are US bases in a country where
indigenous forces are still fighting a set of low-intensity struggles,
with little US involvement. Obama is having his troops leave exactly as
quickly as the Iraqi parliament asked him to. Most US troops in Iraq
seem mainly to be in the moving business now, shipping out 1.5 million
pieces of equipment.
The last 4,000 Marines will hand over responsibility for al-Anbar
Province, once among the more violent places on earth, to the US Army
on Saturday, and shortly thereafter the Marines will depart the
country.
US narratives of how Baghdad and environs relatively speaking calmed
down leave out the victory of the Shiites in the civil war fought
2006-2007, and the ethnic cleansing of most Sunni Arabs from Baghdad.
Despite the continued possibility of terrorism, the demoralized and
defeated Sunnis seem unlikely to be able or willing to organize for a
repeat of the civil war any time soon. (Sunni Arabs are probably less
than 20% of the population, whereas Shiites are about 60%, something
the Sunnis long denied, a denial that made them overconfident they
could defeat the majority). In the meantime, Iraqi military capacity
seems just barely adequate to security tasks outside a few hotspots
such as Mosul.
Contrary to the consensus at Washington think tanks, Obama is ahead of
schedule in his Iraq withdrawal, to which he is committed, and which
will probably unfold pretty much as he has outlined in his speeches.
The attention of the US public has turned away from Iraq so decisively
that Obama's achievement in facing down the Pentagon on this issue and
supporting Iraq's desire for practical steps toward sovereignty has
largely been missed in this country.
Not only will the US drawdown in Iraq greatly improve the image of the
US in the Arab world and allow for more cooperation with Arab
countries, but it will probably help US-Turkish relations, as well.
Turks often blame the US for backing Iraqi Kurds and allowing a
resurgence in Kurdish terrorism via the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK), to
some 5,000 of whose fighters Iraqi Kurdistan has given safe harbor. The
US will soon be out of that picture, and Turks and Kurds will have to
pursue their relations on a bilateral basis.
Obama was handed a series of catastrophes. He has done better in
handling some than others. But his decision on Iraq was the right one,
the one that allows the US to depart with dignity, and allows Iraqis to
work out their own internal problems. It is in this sense that Obama
won the Iraq War.
posted by Juan Cole @ 1/20/2010 01:23:00 AM