Back To The Base

Via Juan Cole, McClatchy is reporting that Maliki himself is rejecting the Status of Forces Agreement:

Fearing political division in the parliament and in his country, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki won’t sign the just-completed agreement on the status of U.S. forces in Iraq, a leading lawmaker said Friday.

The new accord’s demise would be a major setback for the Bush administration, which has been seeking to establish a legal basis for the extended presence of the 151,000 U.S. troops in this country, and for Iraq, which won notable concessions in the draft accord reached a week ago.

"No, he will not" submit the agreement to the parliament, Sheikh Jalal al Din al Sagheer, the deputy head of the Shiite Muslim Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, told McClatchy. "For this matter, we need national consensus."

Sagheer’s rationale for the rejection is interesting. The U.S. has presented it as a settled issue at this point. Mullen, Gates and Odierno have, over the past week, said that the U.S. doesn’t have the time to renegotiate any major points, as the U.N. Security Council mandate for the occupation expires on Dec. 31. Now, Sagheer says, the document as it stands is too divisive: if you vote for it in parliament, you’ll be called an agent of the U.S.; but if you vote against it, you’ll be called and agent of the Iranians. (Why not just have Ahmed Chalabi sign it? He’s fine with being an agent of both. Anyway…) Better, in his view — and that of many his colleagues — to get the U.N. Security Council to approve another 12 months’ worth of occupation, and then let a new U.S. administration and a post-provincial-elections Iraqi government work out the longer-term issues.

And it’s really hard to see how that’s the wrong way to go. It’s often lazily said that the U.N. won’t approve another extension of the mandate. But why? The Permanent 5 has approved the occupation four times. Of the potential obstructionists, China doesn’t mind seeing us tied down in Iraq, and Russia recently gave the occupation a public thumbs-up. Clearly the U.N. is a viable route out of the SOFA sinkhole the Bush administration has insisted on driving the country into.

Furthermore, a lame-duck administration never should have pushed this deal in the first place. The SOFA was a last-ditch attempt at fucking over the next president and entrenching the war into the architecture of U.S. foreign policy — with absolutely no Congressional approval — and the strategy for pushing it through was to treat the Iraqis as vassals. Only fitting, then, that a cross-sectarian bloc would obstruct such an arrogant move. Maybe in another eight months or so the Iraqis will finally be able to withdraw U.S. combat troops in 16 months like Maliki and Obama want.