U.S. Military plans to circumvent SOFA

[Sunday AM service at US base in Eastern Iraq. Too
many atheists in foxholes. Photo by Iason Athanasiadis]

Gareth Porter, no fan of G. W. Bush or his adventure in Iraq, writing in Asian Times online, claims that "United States military leaders and Pentagon officials ... plan to violate a central provision of the US-Iraqi withdrawal agreement requiring the complete pullout of all US combat troops from Iraqi cities by mid-2009..."

These "military leaders and Pentagon officials" will circumvent the agreement by "reclassifying combat troops as support troops."


Porter asserts that this "chicanery ... represents both open defiance of an agreement which the US military has never accepted and a way of blocking president-elect Barack Obama's proposed plan for withdrawal of all US combat troops from Iraq within 16 months of his taking office.

While he does not go so far as to accuse Bush of being involved in this deviousness, it is interesting to note that the Bush administration did a quick 180, moving from no timeline for withdrawal to a specific time-frame drawn up with Iraqi officials. Perhaps I'm being paranoid, but there is no way to trust Bush to be honest about anything; thus, we have to wonder why the roundabout. Is Bush, working with his generals, trying to put Obama in an impossible situation, where he will be forced to back off from his pledge?

Porter doesn't mention Bush, but he says "By redesignating tens of thousands of combat troops as support troops, those officials [military leaders and Pentagon poohbahs] apparently hope to make if difficult, if not impossible, for Obama to insist on getting all combat troops [out] of the country by mid-2010."

General David Petreaeus and General Ray Odierno, both opponents of Obama's plan "have drawn up their own alternative plan rejecting that timeline, as the New York Times reported on Thursday [Dec. 18]."


It is no secret that the Bush administration has long planned for a long-term military presence in Iraq. [To protect the oil wells?] The military is deeply ensconced in that country with multiple "permanent" bases, which are, in fact, US-style cities.

It is also no secret that the military exists to do military things. An Iraqi pullout might well change the configuration of the military in myriad ways, and affect the careers of numerous officers and enlisted men and women. What will they do if they can't "police" Iraq?

Hell, some of them might have to go fight in Afghanistan which has become more dangerous than Iraq.


Whatever, as Porter says, "The signals from Odierno of US military defiance of the withdrawal agreement suggest that the Pentagon and military leadership still do not take seriously the views of the Iraqi public as having any role in determining the matter of foreign troops in their country.

That, of course, has been true from day one, when George W. Bush, the absent without leave National Air Guard officer, sent troops into harm's way on a fool's mission in 2003.


Read Porter's entire article here.

Another take on U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq is here.