Very briefly: We invaded Iraq, threw out the existing government, set up a new government and made an agreement with the new government to leave by a certain date.
When that date approached, the new government insisted we leave.
We left.
No, that we (Obama) could have argued harder for a compromise - a point the NPR article touches on.
And then we went back in, and are there now.
Under what authority?
Posted this in #216
Try reading all the replies.
I have and will, thanks!
It kind of begs my initial question though, doesn’t it? Do you think it was it a mistake for us to leave?
Treat that in a meta kind of way, if you will, without the niggling details of the last dozen or so posts.
If you can’t do that then do you agree we should be there now?
Maybe what you should be asking is: was it a mistake for the Iraqi government to tell us to leave?
Because, seriously, once they told us to leave, then not leaving would have been a mistake. (And an act of war.)
Not too long ago, Afghanistan changed their mind, and asked if we could stick around a while. Iraq quite possibly should have done the same. With a strong U.S. presence, ISIS couldn’t have gotten off to such a powerful start.
However…shades of Vietnam, we’d be in the position of taking casualties while propping up a corrupt government. No American President wants to be in that situation again.
So…even if they’d begged us to stay, it would probably have been a mistake to have done so. It would have ruined Obama’s legacy. (The Republicans were an even worse enemy of his than ISIS!)
There’s two different issues there. One is internal to the US legal system: had Congress authorised military action in Iraq? The answer to that is that it did, in a resolution for the use of force which gave substantial discretion to the President.
Based on that resolution, President Bush invaded Iraq. That was an act of war, pure and simple, against the sovereign state of Iraq. That war, as most wars do, ignored any legal relationship with the Iraqi government of Saddam Hussein.
The second issue came up after the invasion, and after a new Iraqi government was set up, which the US government recognised as the legitimate government of Iraq. That issue was whether the US had the agreement of the Iraqi government for US troops to stay on Iraq. The new Iraqi government wanted to restore Iraqi sovereignty fully, which meant that in their view, if the US military stayed in Iraq, they were not immune from Iraqi criminal law. Certain events at Abu Ghraib contributed to this view by the Iraqi government.
That put the US government in a bind. The US had argued that one of the reasons for the invasion was to establish a free and democratic Iraqi government. Once the new government was up and running, the US had to treat it as a sovereign country, or else the entire rationale of establishing democracy would be shown to be a sham. And the government that the US had helped establish and recognised was now defending Iraqi sovereignty against the US itself.
When neither administration was able to reach an agreement with Iraq on the status of forces, the US had to pull out under the agreement with the new Iraqi government. If it did not withdraw, then the US would be saying to the Iraqis and to the world that US would not stand by its word, and that the much-heralded new, democratic government of Iraq was simply a US puppet. Staying on without an agreement with the new Iraqi government would be a military occupation, as Running Coach suggests.
That’s a fair summary. The Iraqi government on 2011 thought that it could do without the US. When 2014 rolled around and al Qaeda in Iraq had morphed into ISIS, as the NPR article outlines, they realised they needed US help and invited the US back in. That change in policy is the sort of thing that sovereign states can make, as circumstances change. And that change in Iraq policy was what gives the US to be authority to be in Iraq without it being a military occupation.
Sure, as a matter of military power, the US could have ignored the Iraqi government and stayed in Iraq past the negotiated withdrawal date. But as I suggested above, if the IS had done that, it would have completely undercut the argument that one of the reasons for the invasion was to establish a free and sovereign Iraq. Keeping troops in Iraq over the opposition of the Iraqi government would have been a naked display of military power. It would mean that the Iraqi government was simply a puppet of the US, which the US could override at pleasure.
And if the US had stayed in Iraq, contrary to the agreement signed by President Bush and over the opposition of the Iraqi government, that in itself could have contributed to further unrest, aimed directly at the US military. There is no guarantee that stating in Iraq without the permission of the Iraqi government would have prevented the rise of ISIS. Ot may actually have inflamed Iraqi popular feeling against the US.
That’s a very good question: why were Republican politicians saying that President Obama should ignore an international agreement signed by a President Bush? Why were the Republican politicians criticising President Obama for being unable to make a better deal with Iraq than President Bush had been made? Those are certainly good questions.
That’s an interesting article. Thanks for linking to it. However, at best it’s quoting one expert who’s criticising Obama for not getting a better deal than Bush did. I’m no expert in international diplomacy, but my thought is that if two successive US presidents, of different parties, are unable to make a deal with another country, it probably wasn’t possible to make that deal.
Yes, it does say that, but it also says that at the time of the withdrawal, the prevailing opinion seemed to be that the Iraqi government and army could handle the situation. That proved not to be the case, due to Iraqi corruption, complacency, and Shia-Sunni infighting.
Is there some particular number of times people have to say “no” to you in answer to this question before you will hear what people are saying?
Not sure what you mean here but it sounds a lot like you are asking “if you ignore all the detailed reasons you have given as to why leaving wasn’t a mistake, was leaving a mistake?”
I think there are decent reasons for being there given the Iraq government’s invitation.
I’m afraid a proper answer to such a complex question can’t ignore all the niggling details.
So in light of the following niggling details:
(1) the United States had solemnly pledged to the Government of Iraq that it would withdraw all US forces by December 31, 2011;
(2) the Iraqi government was insisting that the US keep its word; and,
(3) the general view appears to have been that the surge had worked and the Iraqis could handle the situation,
then yes, I think it was appropriate for the US to stand by its agreement to an ally and withdraw its troops.
He pushed for an extension, the Iraqi government said no. What else should he have done?
And yes the reason the government said no is directly because of the abuses at Abu Ghairib and other places that happened under Bush. They wanted the option of trying US soldiers under Iraqi law if there was future abuses. You cannot make any decision about whether it was right or wrong to leave without reference to the situation Obama had when we walked into office. Insisting otherwise is infantile five year old logic.
I’ll try and work on my infantile five your old logic.
Although, if you look back at five years ago…
Nah.
Let me asked you what you didn’t address in my earlier post - was it a mistake we went back in?
Thanks!
** Northern Piper - let me respond to your well thought out post later today when I have the time to respond to it in kind.
We haven’t gone back in, not in anyway like before. Up until there recently there was only trainers, advisers and special ops in Iraq. Air Strikes is not “going back in”. Now there are some forward air spotters on the ground and US advisors assisting with the battle of Mosul. So pretty soon Mosul will fall, and ISIS power and prestige (and ability to recruit) will go down considerably and it’s down to Obama.
Oh and Obama got Osama Bin Laden as well which somehow Bush never managed to do, weak effort! So yeah actually Obama has done a pretty good job of fighting ISIS and Al Qaeda while minimising the amount of US troops in danger on the ground. Excellent!
So tell me Hewey Logan, why is that you want more US troops to die?
Our current involvement in Iraq is both by the invitation of the Iraqi government, and very, very small. We only have a few hundred troops there. If it is a mistake, it’s a minor one, minor enough that it’s not worth the amount of worry we’re giving it.
This is the ‘adult talk’ I’m not ready for?
Which doesn’t answer the question.
We have over 5,000 there. And he just added more.
It’ll be roughly the same amount in Iraq that there are in Afghanistan when he leaves office.
**Obama withdrew the final American combat troops from Iraq at the end of 2011, when that country was relatively stable. But the Iraqi fighting resumed as the Islamic State emerged as a potent force, and Obama sent American forces back into Iraq. About 5,000 Americans are now there, mostly training the Iraqis and working on the air campaign against ISIS.
The fear that the same thing could happen in Afghanistan has clouded plans for a complete American withdrawal in that country.**
It’s interesting to me that on the one hand the NPR article I mentioned above hems and haws over whether leaving was good or bad idea and helped bring about ISIS, but in this article they’re firm on why we’re in both places - we don’t want to have what happened in Iraq to happen in Afghanistan if we leave too early.
Am I doing your homework for you?
The United States and some of its allies invaded Iraq in 2003, an open act of war (and arguably a war crime, but no one can bring the USA to court over it.) Within a month Iraq ceased to have a functioning government, and its status was that of a state occupied by a belligerent force, to wit the “coalition.”
The United States formally transferred sovereignty of Iraq back to an Iraqi government on June 28, 2004. It was in the news and everything.
No and no.
The United States and Iraq had a mutual agreement that the US would remove its combat troops by December 31, 2011.
The subsequent agreement was NOT an agreement to go to the previous status. As people have explained to you with great patience, the American presence in Iraq is not the same as it was before.
This may be true. However, Iraq is a sovereign nation, and at some point the USA had to leave, be that in 2011, 2017, or whenever, and we do not know if staying would have made things better or worse. For all you or I know, reneging on the agreement and taking away Iraq’s sovereignty would have simply created more resentment and made the problem explode twice as badly when the USA finally did leave.
I am sure the USA could solve lots of problems by invading and occupying other countries. Oil prices could be reduced by simply invading Canada and having the government pump all its oil directly into U.S. reserves. Perhaps the international drug trade could be reduced by invading northern Mexico. The United States, however, is supposed to be a civilized country run by decency and law.
He only asks; he does not answer. That’s a not-uncommon debate technique, although an annoying and ultimately pointless one.
HeweyLogan: G’wan, prove me wrong. Actually answer a question: What should the U.S. have done, re Iraq, in 2011? Go or stay?
Taking into account all of the niggling details, of course, since a President’s decisions have to be judged in the full context.
I’ve answered plenty, thanks.
Sounds like going or staying wasn’t an option, if I’m to understand Northern Piper and Rick Jay correctly. I don’t disagree with them on that point per se, or whether the Iraqi’s wanted us to out. I guess what I don’t agree with is the idea we had no option but to leave. If that makes sense.
Meaning I (for no other reason than what I believe from what I remember the arguments being at the time) that we could have pushed for a plan that both allowed sovereignty for the Iraqi’s and allowed us to stay with enough power to counter what eventually happened.
What happened in essence (in my opinion) is Obama and his side wanted us gone and the side the Iraqi’s took made that all the more easy. In effect ‘You want us out too? You got it!’ No further discussion needed. See ya!
Because had we wanted to stay, I think we would have found a way to stay.
I wish I had more to base that on, but I don’t, quite honestly. I wish I could read or find out more on why people from both sides thought that was an option. I mean that sincerely. Because I don’t see how our leaving didn’t anything but make matters worse, like I remember people saying, at the time, it would.
I didn’t start out thinking this way but I wonder why there isn’t the hew and cry from Democrats on why we’re back in again. If we should have left and washed our hands of it, why not tell them to get lost? Let all hell break loose, it’s not our problem anymore. They got what they wanted and asked for.