The withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq was one of the most contentious issues of the 2008 presidential campaign. While Democrats insisted on a quick and phased removal of troops, Republicans like John McCain opted for a decidedly ambiguous “stay the course” approach which would leave U.S. forces in Iraq for “maybe 50, maybe 100 years.”
In a remarkable reversal that many members of the GOP are now hailing, President Obama has decided to withdraw all “combat forces” by August 2010, and remaining forces by December 2011. Prominent Democrats like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi have criticized the plan to leave 35,000 to 50,000 “residual troops” until the final withdrawal date. Disregarding the paradoxical positions taken by both parties, the plan seems ridden with loopholes.
First, Article 27 of the Status of Forces Agreement negotiated by the Bush Administration in 2008 gives the United States leave to “take appropriate measures, in the event of any external or internal threat or aggression against Iraq.” The ambiguity of this rhetoric is worrisome. After all, Iraq’s Shiite majority is likely to form closer ties with Iran, a nation hostile to U.S. interests in the region. The government of Nouri Al-Maliki could easily be replaced by a less pro-Western administration that would formalize these ties. What constitutes “aggression” may thus be a point of contention, and the text of the SOF Agreement is distinctly vague about the nature of any American response. It might, for example, take the same form as the “appropriate measures” carried out in 2003 to protect the American people from the “imminent threat” of Iraq’s non-existent stockpile of destructive weapons.
Second, there does not appear to be any plan to scrap the $700 million monstrosity jokingly called an “embassy.” The 104-acre complex in downtown Baghdad is about the size of Vatican City and heavily fortified even by the standards of the so-called “Green Zone.” Its construction is permanent, and the United States will maintain a staff of more than 1,000 in addition to marine and security contingents. The price of sustaining such a large facility will cost the U.S. taxpayer a projected $1.2 billion a year, with funds paying for staff and maintenance as well as a cinema, swimming pool, and recreational centre. Construction contracts for the facility were awarded to “First Kuwaiti Trading and Contracting,” a company notable for its unethical labour practices. In July 2007, a congressional sub-committee heard testimony from a medical technician working on the embassy. He claimed that the company had illegally employed foreign workers who had their passports confiscated while believing they were bound for Dubai to work on hotels. He described the working conditions at the construction site as “absurd,” noting that many of the workers were “without shoes, gloves, or safety harnesses.” Thus, Baghdad’s costly fortress will remain indefinitely in a location central to Iraqi governance and infrastructure.
But perhaps the biggest hole in the Obama withdrawal plan is that it makes no mention of the more than 100,000 private security guards working under State Department contracts in Iraq, a number likely to increase if troop withdrawal occurs on schedule. These personnel are not the benevolent, smiling security guards one sees at a shopping mall, but a vast mercenary army consisting of multiple firms, and completely immune to Iraqi law according to a report by the Congressional Research Service of the U.S. Congress.
The Iraq War is often characterized as an “unmitigated familiar” or a “terrible strategic blunder,” but just as the word “aggression” is highly subjective, so is the definition of success. For the Iraqi people, the war meant the destruction of their secular education system, more than a million refugees, and terrifying sectarian violence. For the American taxpayer, it meant an estimated bill of $3 trillion (though an accurate number is impossible to gauge) and more than 4,000 military casualties. For American firms, the invasion created a highly profitable enterprise; the titanic sum spent on the war did not simply disappear into a vacuum. Rather, much of it was transferred to private companies in a dramatic outsourcing funded by the U.S. taxpayer.
The war’s preamble was also a highly successful public relations exercise: one poll conducted in 2003 by the Washington Post found that nearly 70 per cent of Americans believed Saddam Hussein to be responsible for the 9/11 attacks. Another poll, conducted in late 2006, found that 90 per cent of American soldiers believed that the purpose of the U.S. mission in Iraq was “to retaliate for Saddam’s role in the 9/11 attacks.” These spurious pretexts for the war have long evaporated, but the occupation itself may be far from over.
