WP: The hasty U.S. pullback from Syria is a searing moment in America’s withdrawal from the Middle East

[nonniey]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/the-hasty-us-pullback-from-syria-is-a-searing-moment-in-americas-withdrawal-from-the-middle-east/2019/10/16/82c0ff3c-ef5a-11e9-bb7e-d2026ee0c199_story.html

 

BEIRUT — The blow to America’s standing in the Middle East was sudden and unexpectedly swift. Within the space of a few hours, advances by Turkish troops in Syria this week had compelled the U.S. military’s Syrian Kurdish allies to switch sides, unraveled years of U.S. Syria policy and recalibrated the balance of power in the Middle East.

As Russian and Syrian troops roll into vacated towns and U.S. bases, the winners are counting the spoils.

The withdrawal delivered a huge victory to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who won back control of an area roughly amounting to a third of the country almost overnight. It affirmed Moscow as the arbiter of Syria’s fate and the rising power in the Middle East. It sent another signal to Iran that Washington has no appetite for the kind of confrontation that its rhetoric suggests and that Iran’s expanded influence in Syria is now likely to go unchallenged....... Click link for the rest of the Article.

[nonniey]

Replied to a call out on this in another threat but won't make you go looking.  So I'll post here as well.  About the 4-5th time I've posted this over the years.

https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/how-2011-us-troop-withdrawal-iraq-led-rise-isis

....

The legal basis for the presence of US troops in Iraq in 2011 was the status of forces agreement (SOFA) signed by President Bush and Prime Minister Maliki in December 2008. Although the SOFA included an aspirational timeline for the complete withdrawal of American troops by the end of 2011, both US and Iraqi officials agreed that the timeline could be extended by a simple exchange of diplomatic notes.[xxii] However, US policy changed substantially at President Obama’s direction in 2011, as the administration reluctantly considered whether to keep a residual force in Iraq after the end of the year.

President Obama entered office in January 2009 determined to fulfill his campaign promise of ending the Iraq War and withdrawing all US forces from Iraq. He accomplished this by employing ambiguity throughout the 2011 negotiations and setting an unachievably high bar for an agreement authorizing a residual force, which allowed him to deflect political blame when negotiations failed 

He used three methods to ensure a new SOFA was unachievable. First, he refused to authorize US negotiators to make an explicit offer to the Iraqi government to leave US troops in the country. Second, he insisted that a residual force could only remain under a new SOFA, ratified by the Iraqi parliament. Third, he demanded immunity for US troops from prosecution in Iraqi courts. By establishing ostensibly reasonable terms that he knew were unlikely to gain support in Iraq, President Obama avoided much of the political backlash that would have been associated with a unilateral withdrawal.

Throughout the negotiations, Obama kept his intentions ambiguous. He repeatedly trumpeted his plan to withdraw all remaining US troops from Iraq by the end of 2011, even as his military advisors almost unanimously supported a continued presence of 10,000 to 20,000 troops.[xxiii] Iraqi officials also understood that they needed American troops to continue training and advising the Iraqi security forces, and to help protect Iraq’s borders.[xxiv] In May 2011, Prime Minister Maliki indicated that he too would support a continued American military presence.[xxv] Under pressure from his commanders and some of his cabinet officials, Obama indicated in May that he was prepared to keep up to 10,000 troops in Iraq, which he revised to about 5,000 troops by August. However, that number was a closely guarded secret, and he never authorized his negotiators to convey to the Iraqi government how many troops he was willing to keep in Iraq.[xxvi] This ambiguity led to uncertainty on the Iraqi side—without an offer from the United States, there was nothing for Iraq’s leaders to debate or negotiate.

Obama’s insistence that US troops could only remain in Iraq under new SOFA came as a surprise to both US negotiators and to Prime Minister Maliki, who had been working off the understanding that the US presence could be extended through an exchange of diplomatic notes. The Bush administration had spent nearly a year negotiating the 2008 SOFA, but the Obama administration did not begin negotiations until June 2011, less than six months prior to the planned completion of the US troop withdrawal.[xxvii] The condensed negotiation timeline added to the confusion and ambiguity, complicating the new agreement’s chances of success.

Obama’s insistence on legal immunity for US troops, while ostensibly reasonable, was an artificial barrier designed to kill the deal. When the same issue had arisen in 2008, Bush’s lead negotiator, Brett McGurk, had devised a creative solution. He asserted that it was possible to “offer the Iraqis in principle what they say they need… while retaining in practice essential protections for all US military personnel in Iraq [original emphasis in bold].”[xxviii] The 2008 SOFA granted Iraq the “primary right to exercise jurisdiction” over US troops in cases of “grave premeditated felonies… when such crimes are committed outside agreed facilities and areas and outside duty status.”[xxix] However, accused persons would remain in US custody, and it was understood that, in practice, no US servicemember would be tried before the Iraqi judicial system.[xxx] Obama refused to accept this solution, which had already been passed in Iraq’s parliament and had been implemented without incident in the intervening period.

Obama’s negotiators knew that his demand for legal immunities would never make it through the Iraqi parliament.[xxxi] Knowing that parliamentary ratification was unlikely, Obama was negotiating in bad faith. The Bush administration had determined in 2008 that ratification was unnecessary.[xxxii] The Obama administration’s position was that approval in parliament was necessary for the agreement to be binding under international law.[xxxiii] However, as lawmakers in the United States pointed out, US personnel operate in many countries under executive agreements or exchanges of diplomatic notes, neither of which require parliamentary ratification.[xxxiv] Furthermore, the phrase “binding under international law” is, in practice, essentially meaningless. By its own definition, the U.S. State Department considers any international agreement “to be legally binding in the absence of an express provision indicating its nonlegal nature.”[xxxv]

In October 2011, Iraqi leaders approved the continued presence of US military trainers but refused to grant them immunity. This ended the SOFA negotiations, and the 45,000 remaining US troops withdrew from Iraq by the end of the year.[xxxvi] The withdrawal of US troops led to the deterioration of the Iraqi security forces, the reemergence of a security vacuum in parts of the country, and the oppression of the Sunnis, laying the groundwork for the return of AQI.

President Obama’s support for Maliki and withdrawal of US troops from Iraq reversed the tenuous progress made since the Sunni Awakening and the US strategy shift in 2007. The decision to back Maliki for a second term as prime minister profoundly undermined the development of a legitimate Iraqi government, the primary objective of counterinsurgency.[xxxvii] Passive US support for Maliki’s reinterpretation of the Iraqi constitution to serve his own purposes signaled to Iraqis that the US did not believe they deserved to choose their own leaders. The second and third order effects were disastrous......

Edited 20 hours ago by nonniey

[Larry]

I'm not sure I'd even mind as much, if it was actually a withdrawal from the middle east.  

 

I've been dreaming for decades of the day when we can just tell the whole region to go ahead and kill each other, we don't care any more.  

 

Not sure I approve of it, when we're committing ourselves to doing whatever Israel and Saudi Arabia (and Russia) tell us to do, there.  

[visionary]

3 minutes ago, Larry said:

I've been dreaming for decades of the day when we can just tell the whole region to go ahead and kill each other, we don't care any more.    

I'm sure they're thinking the same about us right now.

Edited October 24, 2019 by visionary

[visionary]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited October 24, 2019 by visionary

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Edited October 24, 2019 by visionary

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[nonniey]

This thread just gets my blood boiling. Who started this thread anyway.

[twa]

27 minutes ago, nonniey said:

This thread just gets my blood boiling. Who started this thread anyway.

 

Probably a troll....or a Russian plant. 😉

[visionary]

The way he keeps saying ISIS secured makes me think it’s a lot worse than we’re being told.   Also WTF????

Edited October 25, 2019 by visionary

[NoCalMike]

I like how during the Bush administration there was constant push back from Neo-Cons that the mid-east endless wars were about protecting oil and other assets.  Fast forward almost 20 years and Trump is outright telling everyone that troops are being sent over there specifically for oil.   Funny how the truth always has a way of revealing itself, just often times way too late.

[nonniey]

8 minutes ago, NoCalMike said:

I like how during the Bush administration there was constant push back from Neo-Cons that the mid-east endless wars were about protecting oil and other assets.  Fast forward almost 20 years and Trump is outright telling everyone that troops are being sent over there specifically for oil.   Funny how the truth always has a way of revealing itself, just often times way too late.

So why are neo-cons so pissed at the President if he is protecting the oil?

[NoCalMike]

5 minutes ago, nonniey said:

So why are neo-cons so pissed at the President if he is protecting the oil?

 

I think they are more pissed that Trump doesn't appear to know what the hell he is doing. He switches his policies on a daily basis based on absolutely nothing he is advised to do. It's clear he has no understanding of these complex issues.  That might be a start? 

[Larry]

52 minutes ago, NoCalMike said:

I like how during the Bush administration there was constant push back from Neo-Cons that the mid-east endless wars were about protecting oil and other assets.  Fast forward almost 20 years and Trump is outright telling everyone that troops are being sent over there specifically for oil.   Funny how the truth always has a way of revealing itself, just often times way too late.

 

They also became apoplectic if anyone suggested that we went there to obtain a base in the Mideast.  

 

Until Obama made every one of our soldiers die in vain, by pulling them out without getting a base out of the deal.  

[visionary]

 

[visionary]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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[visionary]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[visionary]

 

 

 

 

 

[visionary]

 

 

 

 

[Larry]

 

2 hours ago, visionary said:

 

 

Part of the job of being POTUS is that you get the credit, or the blame, for anything that happens while you're behind is in the chair.  

 

Might not be logical or fair, but it's part of the job.  

[visionary]

 it probably happened while he was golfing, but point taken.

 

I wonder how long he’s known about it.  It doesn’t seem the kind of thing he would have been involved in for a while and been able to keep secret.  I mean is it possible he only found out moments before tweeting about it?

[Bozo the kKklown]

Trump will make this his Osama moment, but it isn’t.

 

The American public couldn’t tell you who the leader of ISIS is, and apparently dude off’d himself. Also ISIS posed no threat to the US, unlike the guy who masterminded several successful terror operations against the US.

[Larry]

14 minutes ago, visionary said:

I wonder how long he’s known about it

 

If you're, say, the CIA DDO, do you tell Trump about this operation before it happens?  

 

Not claiming any inside knowledge whatsoever.  But I'd bet a good chunk of money that the thought of "do we not tell him about it till afterwards?" got some serious thought.