Obama Sticks to a Deadline in Iraq
When President Obama approved a plan to withdraw combat forces from Iraq this summer, it was based on the assumption that a newly elected government would be in place by the time Americans headed home. Fourteen months later, that assumption is exploding but the plan remains the same.
The delay and messy aftermath of the Iraqi election mean it may be months before the next government is formed, even as tens of thousands of American troops pack to leave. Yet Mr. Obama has not had a meeting on Iraq with his full national security team in months, and the White House insists that it has no plans to revisit the withdrawal timetable.
The situation presents a test for Mr. Obama’s vow to end the war, perhaps the most defining promise he made when he ran for president. While Mr. Obama has proved flexible about other campaign promises and deadlines, his plan to pull out combat forces by August and the remaining 50,000 trainers and advisers by December 2011 has been the most inviolate of policies.
By sticking to the deadline, Mr. Obama effectively is abandoning the thesis he adopted on the recommendation of military and civilian advisers in February 2009 that a large American military presence was needed long enough to provide stability during the post-election transition.
Instead, the president is now relying on the conclusion that Iraqis are stepping up to the challenges of governing and security that for too long depended on Americans.
“We see no indications now that our planning needs to be adjusted,” said Ben Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser to Mr. Obama. “We did anticipate an extended period of government formation,” and recent Iraqi-led missions that have killed leaders of Al Qaeda in Iraq show “their growing capacity to provide for security, which of course is critical to ending our combat mission at the end of August.”
While Mr. Obama has not convened a full-scale meeting on Iraq lately, Mr. Rhodes noted that Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who manages Iraq policy, does hold such meetings regularly and keeps Mr. Obama informed. “It’s something that he’s obviously regularly engaged in,” Mr. Rhodes said of the president.
For Mr. Obama, shifting the deadline would prove complicated for both logistical and political reasons. As he pulls troops out of Iraq, he has been sending more to Afghanistan, putting pressure on the armed forces. And with his liberal base angry at the Afghan troop buildup, any delay of the Iraq drawdown could provoke more consternation on the left.
But the resistance to revisiting the deadline has drawn concern from former American officials, including some who participated in formulating the Obama policy last year. The original plan anticipated Iraqi elections in December and the formation of a new government at least 60 days afterward. Instead, the elections did not take place until March and produced a near tie between the parties of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki and former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi. And now the two are fighting through the courts and recounts.
Ryan C. Crocker, the former American ambassador to Iraq who was appointed by President George W. Bush and later made recommendations to Mr. Obama regarding the drawdown, said the administration should consider extending the August deadline.
“I am a little bit nervous,” Mr. Crocker, now dean of the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University, said in a recent interview. “The elections were later than expected and there were very close results between Maliki and Allawi, which suggest it’s going to be a very long process. We may not even have a new government until we’re at the August deadline. I’d like the U.S. to retain the original flexibility.”
Meghan L. O’Sullivan, a former deputy national security adviser to Mr. Bush who oversaw Iraq policy, also said August might be too soon.
“I’m for a shift away from the current rigid deadline to something more flexible, more reflective of the fluid and tense situation in Iraq, where the last thing the Iraqis really need is for the United States to be focused more on exit than anything else at a moment of high political uncertainty,” she said.
Two former officials who worked on Iraq policy in the Obama administration said that after it became clear how late the elections would be, Gen. Ray Odierno, the commander in Iraq, wanted to keep 3,000 to 5,000 combat troops in northern Iraq after the Aug. 31 deadline. But the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the matter, said it was clear that the White House did not want any combat units to remain.
Brig. Gen. Stephen R. Lanza, a spokesman for General Odierno, said no formal request to the White House was ever made. “Nor,” he added, “has the president ever denied him the tools needed to complete our mission.”
General Odierno, as well as his commander, Gen. David H. Petraeus, and the ambassador, Christopher J. Hill, have all said in recent days that they are satisfied with the current timetable.
“I feel very comfortable with our plan,” General Odierno said on “Fox News Sunday” last week, “and unless something unforeseen and disastrous happens, I fully expect us to be at 50,000 by the first of September.”
General Petraeus, in an interview, said the remaining force “is still a substantial number” that should be capable of handling the situation. “The whole process of drawing down and getting to the change in the mission is on track,” he said, “and what we’re seeing in the wake of elections has included efforts by Al Qaeda in Iraq once again to ignite sectarian violence, but we have not seen any success in that regard.”
Some military analysts who have favored higher troop levels in Iraq in the past agreed that the current timetable still made sense. Michael E. O’Hanlon, a scholar at the Brookings Institution, said staying longer would mean only that Americans could be enmeshed in deciding between Mr. Maliki and Mr. Allawi. “I don’t see why we should be picking sides in a top-down civil war,” he said.
