US soldiers preparing to board aircraft departing Baghdad, Iraq (Photo: AP -- Courtesy, Wall Street Journal)
President Obama announced on Friday that all US troops would be withdrawn from Iraq by the end of the year in compliance to the “status of forces” agreement previously arranged between the Iraqi government and then-President George W. Bush.
The move will bring a formal end to the nearly eight-year war and American occupation that has cost perhaps hundreds of thousands of lives — nearly 4,500 American soldiers have died — along with nearly $1 trillion.
The president framed the withdrawal announcement as a sign of victory in Iraq and of keeping a promise he made on the campaign trail before taking office that he would pull US forces out of Iraq. There are currently around 40,000 US troops stationed in the country.
President Barack Obama on Friday declared an end to the Iraq war, one of the longest and most divisive conflicts in U.S. history, announcing that all American troops would be withdrawn from the country by year’s end.
Obama’s statement put an end to months of wrangling over whether the U.S. would maintain a force in Iraq beyond 2011. He never mentioned the tense and ultimately fruitless negotiations with Iraq over whether to keep several thousand U.S. forces there as a training force and a hedge against meddling from Iran or other outside forces.
Instead, Obama spoke of a promise kept, a new day for a self-reliant Iraq and a focus on building up the economy at home.
“I can report that, as promised, the rest of our troops in Iraq will come home by the end of the year,” Obama said. “After nearly nine years, America’s war in Iraq will be over.”
Obama spoke after a private video conference with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, and he offered assurances that the two leaders agreed on the decision.
The U.S. military presence in Iraq stands at just under 40,000. All U.S. troops are to exit the country in accordance with a deal struck between the countries in 2008 when George W. Bush was president.
Obama, an opponent of the war from the start, took office and accelerated the end of the conflict. In August 2010, he declared the U.S. combat mission over.
“Over the next two months our troops in Iraq, tens of thousands of them, will pack up their gear and board convoys for the journey home,” Obama said. “The last American soldier will cross the border out of Iraq with their heads held high, proud of their success and knowing that the American people stand united in our support for our troops.”
More than 4,400 American military members have been killed since the U.S. and its allies invaded Iraq in March 2003.
Although presented by the White House and military leaders as a specific decision made by the government to withdraw, the reality is that withdrawal is not the favored policy of the administration and the imminent disengagement in Iraq actually represents a political defeat.
As recently as this summer, military and administration officials were eagerly discussing ways to keep thousands of US troops in Iraq even after the December 31, 2011 withdrawal timetable agreed upon by the Bush administration and the Iraqi government. Plans called for as many as 10,000 troops to stay in Iraq into 2012 and beyond, including special forces that would undertake frequent “kill or capture” missions against suspected insurgents or terrorists.
Such proposals were dependent on approval from the Iraqis themselves,which reports indicate the US government was working to achieve in recent weeks. Ultimately, talks broke down over questions of whether any troops that stayed in Iraq would retain the legal immunity they currently enjoy. Without immunity, the military would refuse to stay.
Although most uniformed US soldiers will be leaving Iraq, and the military will be barred from keeping any bases in the country post-withdrawal, an American military and diplomatic presence will remain well beyond the end of the year.
Even before the withdrawal announcement, as the number of US troops was gradually scaled back, the Obama administration and military were increasingly relying on over 10,000 private military contractors to sustain American operations in Iraq.
Most of these contractors will remain in Iraq even after the formal military withdrawal, with most connected to the US embassy in Baghdad, the largest American embassy in the world staffed with the nearly 2,000 individuals staffing it comprised of various US officials, state department employees and military detachments. In addition, around 9,000 private contractors will continue to be stationed at the Baghdad embassy to serve as security and in other functions.
The shift to a nearly 100-percent reliance on private security contractors to represent an ongoing American military presence in Iraq is unprecedented, with a virtual private army doing everything from assisting wounded US personnel to deploying armed vehicles and helicopters. It’s a mission that the Pentagon and State Department have “never done before,” and it begs the question of whether the US is actually “leaving” Iraq.
With the removal of all U.S. troops from Iraq by the end of the year looking more likely, absent an agreement to extend legal immunity, a large contingent of U.S. contractors will still remain facing their own legal and logistical ambiguities and challenges.
The complexity of the situation is not lost on top officials at the State Department who are busy preparing to assume control of every U.S. responsibility in Iraq – including contracting operations.
“The State Department is doing something that quite frankly we have never done before, this is not going to be easy and I think we all understand that,” Deputy Secretary of State Thomas Nides told CNN.
“We owe it to the families (who have lost loved ones in Iraq), and to the taxpayers to get this transition done correctly,” he added.
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Once the U.S. military presence in Iraq is gone, the embassy in Baghdad, the largest U.S. embassy in the world, will be staffed by approximately 1,700 diplomats and representatives of various cabinet agencies. They will be supported by approximately 5,000 security contractors. There will also be up to 4,000 contractors supporting every service for U.S. personnel in Iraq from food to sanitation and anything else necessary for diplomats to carry out their jobs.
Over time, the State Department will look to add local staff in Iraq on a large level at the embassy thereby reducing the numbers of contractors needed Nides said.
In recent months, the State Department began adding staff to prepare for assuming oversight of the contractor workforce in Iraq once the military has pulled out. “The good news is that we’ve got some really strong management people,” that have been added to the embassy staff to plan for all sorts of contingencies with contracting options once the military presence is gone, Nides said. “We think we are in pretty good shape, but there is no question” it will be challenging to get everything right, he said.
With a complete removal of U.S. forces, some also worry diplomat mobility around the country may be constrained with a much smaller number of contractor personnel available to protect diplomats. Nides dismisses that notion saying that U.S. diplomats have been moving around Iraq for years largely without U.S. military escort, relying on contractors when necessary. That situation will continue he says after the military pulls out.
That’s not enough. We need to bring ALL troops home from Afghanistan…10 years is ridiculous having thousands of troops chasing 150 al Queda. And, consider what he’s done in Libya, Pakistan, et al. We now have 10 on-going encroachments (all unConstitutional) occuring under Obama and the public is sick of it Bring ALL troops home now and garrison them on both of our national borders. Close the 900+ foreign military bases as well. Ends time to end our empire…of course the contractors and their lobbyists who make billions off of death will howl, but we don’t care. Let’s restore our once thriving republic.
This is exactly what he’s been saying since 2008. It’s odd to see people treating this as news. I knew that all of our troops were going to be out of Iraq by the end of 2011 years ago.
YESSSS…Another Promise Kept! Super POTUS…..
Travel the country and keep hammering those Senate/House Repugs on why they can’t CREATE Jobs…those loonies promised Jobs…where the fcuk is it?????
They voted NO to even just debating the POTUS Jobs Bill….pure evil bstrds.
Say what you want about Obama, but on his watch Osama’s gone, Gadaffi’s gone, we have decimated Al-Qaeda, and we are bringing the troops home from Iraq. All in three years. Maybe he hasn’t met all of the expectations we asked for, but Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” was nothing compared to President Obama’s.
The shame of this decision is that it took the leadership of a corrupt Iraqi “government” to insist on the idea, rather than American leadership. Now when will Afghanistan tell us to get out of heroin trafficking?
Will the thousands of corporate para-militaries be coming home too?
Have Bush/Cheney been indicted for war crimes? Has Bradley Manning been.
freed? Will O-Bomb-A return all that Wall Street campaign dough?