In My View

Crumbling Promises

The USA would withdraw all its soldiers from Iraq - barring a few support troops – in 16 months time from the inauguration of the new administration.

The new US government would close the Guantanamo Bay prisons in a year from its inception.

These were the two key promises Barack Obama, the 44^th president of the United States made during his long campaign for office. And these pledges are the crucible on which he would be tested by the international audience in his first days in office.

By the look of it he would have to renege on the Iraq promise right at the outset. Washington’s elite is not in any mood to relent on their strategy of global domination so easily. Presumably, they still think that the US has the economic capability to sustain globe girdling military operations by US forces to uphold their ambitions.

France’s highly acclaimed Le Monde Diplomatique (LMD) has written in its current January issue how the US armed forces top echelons are trying to subvert an agreement that George W Bush’s administration had signed with the Iraqi government for a hundred percent US combat troops withdrawal from the country by 2011. Called the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), it had stipulated that that US troops withdraw from the Iraqi cities and towns and regroup in bases to be located according to another agreement with the Baghdad government.

The SOFA forbade the US forces from operating in the country without full Iraqi “approval” and “coordination.” It also bars the American forces from detaining Iraqis without an Iraqi court order. The agreement also bans the US from using Iraqi territory or airspace to “launch attacks against other countries.” Finally, SOFA, which was concluded on 18 November, last year, held that Washington needed to develop a detailed schedule for “complete withdrawal” of all combat forces and create “mechanisms and arrangements” to reduce US force levels in a stipulated time period.

Obama’s pronouncements were not far different from this agreement. Only his plan was for an accelerated withdrawal, drawing back two brigade level forces every month. But the Washington warriors would like to have nothing of it. So they are already bent on sabotaging the plan and the SOFA to the best of their abilities.

On Thursday (22 January) the new White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs referred to Iraq almost 25 minutes into his hour-long first media briefing of the new administration said, “The president would be provided all access to information about Iraq that would help him take decisions.” This rather laconic reply was about a war that had witnessed the loss of more than 3000 American lives; tied down more than half-a-million US troops; and costed a few billion dollars every day.

As the LMD records, the days of the signing of the SOF agreement the Pentagon officials told the media that the “withdrawal should take place only if conditions (on the ground) warrant it.” This is the precise premise that was rejected by the government of Nuri al-Maliki in Iraq in the negotiations of the SOFA. Obama had said that the sole determinant of his decision to withdraw would be the ‘cost’ of the continuing US presence.

Even before the ink was dry on the new agreement, the Bush administration had decided to circumvent the key provisions like the ban on military operations against any foreign country using Iraqi soil by arguing the “right of self defence.” It even had plans to relabel some of the combat troops in Iraq into training and support troops to go around the provision for withdrawal of forces.

Soon after Obama was elected on November 4, some of our mailboxes were flooded with material from the so-called US experts who argued that the new president-elect’s withdrawal plan was not justifiable for various reasons including the impending Iraqi elections in 2010. For example, Roger Hertog in the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) wrote, “They (the Democrats like Obama) want to cut force levels too early and transfer responsibility to Iraqis before they are ready, and they offer no plan to deal with the chaos that would result six months down the road. In essential outline, they have chosen to duplicate the early mistakes of an (Bush) administration they hold in contempt.”

Colin H Kahl and William E Odom wrote in the venerable Foreign Affairs journal, “Rather than unilaterally and unconditionally withdrawing from Iraq and hoping that the international community will fill the void and push the Iraqis toward accommodation -- a very unlikely scenario -- the United States must embrace a policy of "conditional engagement." This approach would couple a phased redeployment of combat forces with a commitment to providing residual support for the Iraqi government if and only if it moves toward genuine reconciliation. Conditional engagement …..would incorporate the real lesson from the Sunni Awakening.”

Now that Obama has taken office, he seems to have taken to heart all these protestations. So no longer does one hear any clarion calls for withdrawal of troops from Iraq. Instead, the new US president the lesser of the two ‘evils’ – closure of the Guantanamo Bay prison – as the ground on which he can renew the call for freedom and liberty under the American leadership. Thus, expect more falsehoods in the near future.

Pinaki Bhattacharya, currently located in Kolkata, is a Special Correspondent with the Mathrubhumi, Kerala. He writes on Strategic Security issues. He can be contacted at pinaki63@dataone.in