Iraq: Mission (Almost) Accomplished?
Love him or hate him, you can’t say George Bush doesn’t do exactly what he always said he was going to.
America’s unlikely president, so widely despised, purportedly now a lame duck, has once again demonstrated that while others are uselessly dithering, dickering and putting forward dead-end plans, he will push his vision forward in defiance of obstruction. Whether it’s the United Nations and its reticence to enforce its own resolutions, or a United States Congress that thinks abandonment of an entire region to genocide and Iranian domination represents the moral high ground, obstructionists ultimately have proven no obstacle to Bush’s efforts to introduce order and security in the most volatile and dangerous part of the world.
Now, Bush and that strangest of bedfellows, Shiite Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, have revealed their strategic vision for an Iraq that, while politically still unfinished business, is on its way to becoming everything Bush promised four years ago. A free, democratic, U.S.-allied Iraq that has already inspired democratic movements in the region and can stand as a bulwark against the imperial aims of Iran.
We’ve arrived at another moment when, to the derision of his opponents, Bush could once again declare a mission accomplished, his vision realized.
The news that got sidelined this week by Bush’s other unlikely foreign policy initiative, the Annapolis peace talks, is that the United States and Iraq have agreed to a broad security framework, its practical details still to be negotiated. Predicated on a July 2008 drawdown of the surge’s five combat brigades, the deal reportedly envisions an ultimate reduction of U.S. troops from 160,000 to 50,000, pulling out of the forward posts in the villages, towns and cities of Mesopotamia, handing those to strengthened Iraqi forces, and remaining in fixed bases as a strategic force. Their purpose: to deter foreign threats and internal coups, to remain as an insurance policy against sectarian division and presumably, to continue in a support and advisory role to Iraqi forces. It leaves in place the U.S. military’s ability to surge into trouble spots as needed.
The deal further offers the United States, having expended so much blood and treasure in Iraq, preferential treatment in business dealings with Iraq. The much-disparaged oil for blood. Or, if you prefer, friendship, gratitude and loyalty for freedom.
It is a deal sure to enrage Iran, and is all the more surprising that it should be put forward by the waffling, Shiite-dominated government of Nouri al-Maliki.
At this moment, Congress has walked away from Iraq and our troops there for the holidays. Congress has opted not to fund combat operations, hoping to apply some pressure while its impotent Democratic leadership figures out how it can possibly turn a growing success into disaster, for their own perceived political benefit.
George Bush, the United States and Iraqi military, and even the fracticious Iraqi government, under the electoral pressure of the 2006 Congressional turnover, but in defiance of the withdrawal lust of that body, have managed to turn around the debacle that was Iraq, giving that nation and her people some time to breathe and regroup. While the anti-war faction in Congress continues to demand withdrawal, Bush and al-Maliki are creating new facts on the ground that Congress will not be able to deny.
The strategic plan could do for Iraq and the Middle East what hundreds of thousands of American troops have done for Germany and greater Europe, Japan, Korea and greater Asia for more than 50 years. In all of those places, the United States is providing millions of people with security and the opportunity to thrive and live free in the face of well-established threats. Last spring, Bush was derided for offering a Korean vision of the U.S.-Iraqi relationship, but now, he is making it happen.