We've signed an agreement with Iraq to remove all of our troops by the end of this year. Will George W. Obama honor that agreement? He and Mr. Gates are pushing Maliki to keep our soldiers there. Lawrence Korb thinks this is a bad idea for a couple of reasons:
- the Iraqis don't want us
- if we stay, it's likely that Maliki will go
- the Iraqi army is strong enough to handle the insurgents.
I'm not sure that I agree with this last point, but I think the odds of our leaders pushing for us to stay there are very high.
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When you consider that sixteen Iraqi's were killed today in assassinations and bombings, and that's probably about the daily average, it seems unlikely the Iraqi security forces can handle the insurgents.
Maliki is between a rock and a hard place. He wants the Americans to stay. The US has sold him millions of dollars worth of sophisticated military equipment that no Iraqi can operate. They need extensive training in its use, and only the US military can give it.
If he agrees to US troops remaining on Iraqi soil he'll likely have another civil war on his hands, one that will draw in the US and possibly set the country back to how it was in 2008.
Obama and Gates want to keep a military presence for exactly the same reasons George W Bush did: to control the region militarily. It was, of course, why the Bush administration built all those massive bases and 'embassies'.
Let's hope the US government doesn't push Maliki into a corner. I have a suspicion they just might. There will be a lot of pressure from the far-right to do so.
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