Military to Iraq: Are You Really Gonna Kick Us Out?

Danger Room

There are fewer than nine months left in the U.S. military’s long war in Iraq. By the end of the year, the remaining 47,000 U.S. troops will finish packing up their gear and leaving. It’s safe to say their leaders are feeling a certain separation anxiety.

Most notably, Defense Secretary Robert Gates visited Iraq last week and loudly warned that its fractious political leadership was running out of time to request the U.S. to stay. If that construction seems odd — and reminiscent of a jilted lover — it’s out of diplomatic necessity and bureaucratic reality.  The U.S. and Iraq signed an accord in 2008 mandating a full military withdrawal. To halt that withdrawal requires a cumbersome renegotiation, and the host nation has to initiate it. Clock’s ticking.

Gates has signaled for months that he’d be open to keeping some residual force in Iraq. But now that Iraq has traded places with Afghanistan as a “forgotten war,” he’s been a chorus of one. Now the military command in Baghdad is starting to register angst. An anonymous senior military official assembled reporters on Wednesday to warn that a continued U.S. presence would be “best for Iraq,” especially if the country wants to avoid the political turmoil plaguing its neighbors.

That’s an odd message to send. The U.S. war in Iraq has been an anguished experience. Nearly 4450 U.S. troops have lost their lives there — most recently on Sunday. And the two-year long drawdown has largely been successful, even while Iraq spent months without an elected government in 2010, avoiding the predictions of a return to chaos. Now that getting out looks doable, U.S. officials aren’t arguing that staying in Iraq is in the U.S. interest, they’re arguing it’s a great deal for the Iraqis.

But it’s not hard to see what’s going on. Precisely because the U.S. war was so arduous, many in uniform have whispered for months that they’re wary of the post-Saddam enterprise collapsing in the wake of an American pullout. After this year, the U.S. military presence will diminish to a few hundred troops to help with U.S. weapons sales and training. But the State Department will raise a hired army of 5,500 contractors — something it’s never done before — to protect 17,000 civilian employees. All this while the Mideast is in the midst of a historic wave of revolution. No wonder there’s some anxiety at U.S. Forces-Iraq.

U.S. defense officials have said they’ve heard from their Iraqi military counterparts that they want the U.S. to stay. Indeed, last August, the chief of the Iraqi military said he’d need U.S. help until 2020. Politically, that’s been a nonstarter, owing to the residual desire among Iraqis to be done with U.S. occupation. Tens of thousands of Iraqis loyal to the U.S.’ nemesis, Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, greeted Gates’ comments with protests pledging a renewed insurgency. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki needs Sadr’s support to govern.

There’s a similar dynamic in Washington. Barack Obama won the presidency in part by pledging an end to the Iraq war. That’s a promise he’s on track to keep ahead of his reelection, and his top aides have shown no sign of backing off. Gates is on his way out of the Pentagon this year, so he’s free to speak his mind. (He certainly feels Iraq is more central to U.S. interests than an ill-defined war in Libya.) The idea, in a nutshell, is that Obama would be boxed into staying if Maliki came forward and requested it.

In other words, the obstacles to a prolonged U.S. presence in Iraq are the leaders of both countries — one of whom wants to get out in order to stay in power, and the other can’t ask his counterpart to stay for fear of losing power. Both of them feel there’s greater political risk to a prolonged U.S. military presence then to its end, but that calculation carries the risk of alienating their defense establishments. Nine years of a painful war should have taught everybody that getting out is the hardest part of all.