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THE PROGRESSIVE REVIEW - August 26, 2010
Obama Plays Down Plan for Post-2011 Iraq Troop Presence
by: Gareth Porter
Inter Press Service
Washington, - When the Barack Obama administration unveiled
its plan last week for an improvised State Department-
controlled army of contractors to replace all U.S. combat
troops in Iraq by the end of 2011, critics associated with
the U.S. command attacked the transition plan, insisting
that the United States must continue to assume that U.S.
combat forces should and can remain in Iraq indefinitely.
But the differences between the administration and its
critics over the issue of a long-term U.S. presence may
be more apparent than real.
All indications are that the administration expects to
renegotiate the security agreement with the Iraqi
government to allow a post-2011 combat presence of up to
10,000 troops, once a new government is formed in Baghdad.
But Obama, fearing a backlash from anti-war voters in the
Democratic Party, who have already become disenchanted
with him over Afghanistan, is trying to play down that
possibility. Instead, the White House is trying to reassure
its anti-war base that the U.S. military role in Iraq is
coming to an end.
An unnamed administration official who favours a longer-
term presence in Iraq suggested to New York Times corres-
pondent Michael Gordon last week that the administration's
refusal to openly refer to plans for such a U.S. combat
force in Iraq beyond 2011 hinges on its concern about
the coming Congressional elections and wariness about
the continuing Iraqi negotiations on a new government.
Vice-President Joe Biden said in an address prepared for
delivery Monday that it would take a "complete failure"
of Iraqi security forces to prompt the United States to
resume combat.
Obama referred to what he called "a transitional force" in
his speech on Aug. 2, pledging that it would remain "until
we remove all our troops from Iraq by the end of the next
year".
He also declared an end to the U.S. "combat mission" in
Iraq as of Aug. 31. But an official acknowledged told IPS
that combat would continue and would not necessarily be
confined to defending against attacks on U.S. personnel.
The administration decided on the transition from military
to civilian responsibility for security at an interagency
meeting the week of Jul. 19. It made the broad outlines of
the plan public at an Aug. 16 State Department news brief-
ing and another briefing the following day, even though
crucial details had not been worked out.
Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defence for Middle Eastern
Affairs Colin Kahl and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State
for Near Eastern Affairs Michael Corbin presented the
administration plan for what they called a "transition
from a military to civilian relationship" with Iraq.
The plan involves replacing the official U.S. military
presence in Iraq with a much smaller State Department-run
force of private security contractors. Press reports have
indicated that the force will number several thousand, and
that it is seeking 29 helicopters, 60 IED-proof personnel
carriers and a fleet of 1,320 armored cars.
The contractor force would also operate radars so it can
call in airstrikes and fly reconnaissance drones, accord-
ing to the New York Times Aug. 21.
Kahl argued that the transition is justified by security
trends in Iraq. He said al Qaeda is "weaker than it's ever
been", that Moqtada al Sadr's Mahdi Army has been "largely
disbanded", and that there is no strategic threat to the
regime.
That provoked predictable criticism from those whose
careers have become linked to the fate of the U.S.
military in Iraq and who continue to view the United
States as having enormous power to decide the fate of
the country.
Kenneth Pollack of the Brookings Institution, a frequent
visitor to Iraq at the invitation of Gen. David Petraeus
and his successor Gen. Ray Odierno, dismissed the idea of
giving the former U.S. military role in Iraq to the State
Department and Kahl's assessment of security trends as far
too optimistic.
Some officials were talking "as if we're on the five-yard
line," Pollack told the Christian Science Monitor. "We're
on more like the 40 ? and it's probably our 40."
Pollack argued that the U.S. has great influence in Iraq,
which it must use for "persuading" Iraqi leaders to do
various things. If the U.S. troop presence ends in 2011,
he argued, that U.S. power would suffer.
Other variants of that argument were offered by Stephen
Biddle of the Council on Foreign Relations and Michael
O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institution, both of whom
have been frequent guests of the U.S. command in Iraq
and have generally hewed to the military view of Iraq
policy.
Former ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker, who shared the
media spotlight and adulation of Congress with Petraeus
in 2007- 2009 before retiring from the Foreign Service,
opined that the military needs to keep enough presence in
Iraq to encourage Iraq's generals to stay out of politics.
The real position of the administration over the issue is
not much different from that of its critics, however. In
answer to a question after a briefing Aug.17, Kahl said,
"We're not going to abandon them. We're in this for the
long term."
Then Kahl observed, "Iraq is not going to need tens of
thousands of [American] forces." That is consistent with
the figure of 5,000 to 10,000 being called for by the
military, according to the administration official quoted
in New York Times Aug. 18.
At another point, Kahl said, "We'll just have to see what
the Iraqi government will do," adding that the "vast
majority of political actors in Iraq want a long-term
partnership with the United States."
It is been generally assumed among U.S. officers and
diplomats and the Iraqi officials with whom they talk
that once a new Iraqi government is agreed on, it will
begin talks on a longer-term U.S. troop presence, as
former National Security Council official Brett H. McGurk
told the New York Times last month.
At a Pentagon press conference Feb. 22, Gen. Odierno, U.S.
overall commander in Iraq, referred to the purchase by
the Iraqi government of "significant amounts of military
material from the United States," including M1A1 tanks
and helicopters.
Odierno said he expected it would require a "small
contingent" to "train and advise" the Iraqis. That
formula implicitly anticipated a continuation of the
U.S. combat presence in the guise of "advisory and
assistance" units.
But the administration apparently made it clear to
Odierno and others that they were not to contradict the
administration's public posture that U.S. troops were
being withdrawn by the end of 2011.
During the interagency meeting that adopted the Obama
administration transition plan, Odierno told reporters
at a breakfast meeting Jul. 21 he expected U.S. troops
to be down to zero by the end of 2011.
Meanwhile, the Nouri al-Maliki government is not admitting
publicly that it would consider such an extension of the
U.S. troop presence. The spokesman for al-Maliki said
Aug. 12 there are alternatives to keeping U.S. troops in
the country, such as signing "non-aggression and non-
interference pacts" with neighbours.
Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist
specialising in U.S. national security policy. The paper-
back edition of his latest book, "Perils of Dominance:
Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam", was
published in 2006.
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