President Obama’s 19-month Drawdown Plan from Iraq

So instead of a 16-month plan, President Obama has announced a 19-month with an emphasis on pulling as few troops out as possible until after the next round of Iraq elections due at the end of this year. As noted numerous times on this blog (mainly here, here, here, and here) both sides apparently weren't listening to now President Obama's plan for troop withdrawal from Iraq. His top aides said throughout the entire campaign that they felt 50-80,000 troops sounded "about right" for staying in Iraq to perform necessary training and needed support roles as well as counter-insurgency. As this article noted during the campaign, President Obama has always maintained that he would not allow Iraq to fail and mainly because he's never disagreed with our government's determined long-term interests in the region. You see, for the most part, President Obama has never disagreed with what our interests in the Middle-East are; he's only disagreed with the means in which we achieve them. Take Iran as a perfect example. He's never disagreed that Iran should not be allowed to have a nuclear weapon; he's only debated as to how the United States should go about stopping them.

As this blog points out, President Obama's plan is contingent on Iraqi politicians and citizens not resorting back to violence, not on US politicians wishes to no longer be there because it was the wrong war (in their eyes). In other words, the decision on the disposition of the U.S. military is actually in the hands of Iraq's various political actors and not the U.S. Should the Iraqis return to violence, the U.S., according to Obama, will be compelled to stay.

Also noted on this site was that candidate Obama continued to say he would make sure any plan from withdrawal would be contingent on talking with his Commander's on the ground and his top General's. If you listened closely enough, you knew he'd be asking Sec. of Def. Gates to stay on and therefore any plan involving Iraq wouldn't be quite what he campaigned on (as no campaign promise is ever fully realized as stated during a campaign) but instead something similar.

Now according to this NY Times article, it seems he now has more Republican support than Democrat support. Also being missed by most of the media as well as the right and left-wing attacks is this tidbit:

The Obama team told two dozen lawmakers from both parties that at least 90,000 of the 142,000 troops in Iraq would be withdrawn by August 2010 — 19 months after the president's inauguration, or three months longer than the time frame he had outlined as a candidate.

So despite President Obama talking about 35-50,000 troops remaining in Iraq after 19 months, in reality, at some point between August 2010 and the end of 2011, a maximum of 52,000 troops will need to be drawn down due to our SOFA agreement signed by former President Bush and Prime Minister al-Maliki. Of course both countries agree this could change should conditions worsen.

Now you'll notice that of the Congressional Democrats who think 50,000 is too high a number, none of them are on the Senate Armed Services Committee. Plus, maybe they haven't heard about the rising tensions in Northern Iraq that has a resurgent Iraqi army beginning to contest control of areas which Kurds captured when Saddam Hussein fell in 2003. This article put it succinctly: "General Pelosi seeks to run Iraq from her tactical headquarters on Capitol Hill. President Obama, meanwhile, is making the transition from campaigning to governing." Senator Jack Reed (D-Rhode Island) who actually went to Iraq with then presidential candidate Obama supports the plan saying:

"It seems logical to me you would need a force of around that level," he said in an interview. "The critical issue here is the missions that these troops are going to perform."

Another issue I've been pondering for a while now is starting to come to the lime light and that is declining oil prices and what they may or may not be doing to Iraq. I came across this blog post that touches on it but had a startling figure as to why President Obama's plan may be far more manageable then most feared originally.

Those, in turn, have been swollen by pay raises for the civil service, but also, significantly, by the upsizing of the security forces (from 250,000 two years ago to 609,000 today).

Now that is a 359,000 upswing in security forces while we're talking about going from roughly 142,000 troops down to 35-50,000 (down by 92-107,000). Maybe that's a reason why Sen. McCain, after talking with President Obama, Sec. of Def. Gates, and Admiral Mullen said he "supports the plan to leave 50,000 troops in Iraq as briefed by Admiral Mullen and Secretary Gates at the White House this afternoon."

Back to the falling oil prices which are essentially Iraq's sole source of income, this could be worse than people are willing to talk about. Iraq still has no agriculture or industry to speak of. Our way of stabilizing Iraq has been to continually hire more and more people into the government -whether military or civil government. With no tax revenue to speak of from goods and services, that speaks to not having a private sector with capital. With almost every country deficit spending to stimulate the world economy that creates less money to loan Iraq in order to keep it growing. Now we do finally have Germany and France back in Iraq looking to secure contracts for various industries but again, right now that'll take government money from Iraq because the private sector hasn't been built.

In a fairly balanced pro/con article labeling President Obama's plan "feasible but with risks", some important points get made:

Claridge said militant groups like the Mehdi Army of vociferously anti-American Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, would lose steam, since they have defined themselves as opponents of an occupation that is now ending.

In northern Iraq's troubled Nineveh province, al Qaeda and other Sunni Arab insurgent groups still frequently kill, kidnap and bomb, while rising tensions between the central government and the largely autonomous Kurdish region over disputed land and oil will require U.S. diplomatic muscle, analysts say.

Kurds are deeply anxious about the American withdrawal.

"The disputed areas need a third party. With politicians' mentalities, it's hard to see how to resolve this," said Jaffar Mustafa, minister for Kurdistan's Peshmerga fighters.

But Toby Dodge, an Iraq expert at the University of London, said U.S. influence on Iraqi politicians is often overstated.

He said a U.N. initiative on disputed territories is likely to do more to resolve that conflict than U.S. mediation.

Over at Asia Times online, there's a good article pointing out that some General's are at odds.

A field commander in Iraq, who spoke with IPS on the understanding that he would not be identified, asserted flatly that there is no greater risk associated with Obama's 16-month withdrawal plan than with the 23-month plan, contrary to Petraeus and Odierno.

Major General Michael Oates, US commander for the eight southern provinces of Iraq, denied in remarks to reporters February 12 that the security gains in that region were fragile, contrary to the premise that Odierno had publicly asserted. Oates cited the dramatic reduction in activities by Shi'ite militia fighters and the holding of the January 31 elections without any major attacks.

A second US officer now serving in Iraq, who also asked not to be identified, expressed doubt that a 16-month withdrawal is logistically feasible, based on his experience in a specific area south of Baghdad. But he agreed that it is time to complete the turnover of responsibility to the Iraqi Army and rapidly withdraw US combat troops.

United States Central Command (CENTCOM) chief General David Petraeus and Multinational Force Iraq (MNF-I) Commander General Ray Odierno have said they fully support President Obama's 19-month plan. I would bet it's because his original plan was 16-months but now it's 19 and he's continually sworn it'll be conditions based. When President Obama is smart enough to keep Sec. of Def. Gates on, have Ret. Gen. James L. Jones, Jr. as your National Security Advisor, and also naming Chris Hill as the new US Ambassador to Iraq, it's safe to trust that he won't be tolerating a failed Iraq.