Obama vows Iraq pullout, promises not to seek permanent US military bases
Washington,
July 14: US Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama vowed on Monday to
pull out the bulk of US forces from Iraq by mid-2010, but insisted on keeping
"a residual force" to fight remnants of Al Qaeda in the country for
an unspecified amount of time.
And in
a blow to current efforts by the administration of President George W. Bush, he
also promised not to seek permanent US military bases in Iraq, if he is elected
President in November. "As I’ve said many times, we must be as careful
getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in," Mr Obama wrote in the
New York Times.
He
added that the United States could safely redeploy its combat brigades inside
Iraq at a pace that would remove them from the country in 16 months after his
taking office in January of 2009 in case he wins the presidential election.
"That
would be the summer of 2010, two years from now, and more than seven years
after the war began," Mr Obama pointed out.
"After
this redeployment, a residual force in Iraq would perform limited missions:
going after any remnants of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, protecting American
service members and, so long as the Iraqis make political progress, training
Iraqi security forces."
Meanwhile,
Mr Obama will visit Israel and the occupied West Bank next week, Israeli and
Palestinian officials said.
Mr
Obama will be in Israel on July 22 and 23 and hold talks with Prime Minister
Ehud Olmert, foreign minister Tzipi Livni, defence Minister Ehud Barak,
President Shimon Peres and Opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu, an Israeli
official said.
Palestinian
peace negotiator Saeb Erekat said that Mr Obama would also meet President
Mahmoud Abbas.
—AFP,
Reuters
My
Plan For Iraq:
It’s
time we put an end to the war
By
Barack Obama
Chicago:
The call by Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki for a timetable for the removal
of American troops from Iraq presents an enormous opportunity. We should seize
this moment to begin the phased redeployment of combat troops. I have long
advocated it because that is needed for long-term success in Iraq and the
security interests of the United States.
The differences on Iraq in this campaign
are deep. I opposed the war in Iraq before it began, and would end it as
president unlike Senator John McCain. I believed it was a grave mistake to
allow ourselves to be distracted from the fight against Al-Qaida and the
Taliban by invading a country that posed no imminent threat and had nothing to
do with the 9/11 attacks. Since then, more than 4,000 Americans have died and
we have spent nearly $1 trillion. Our military is overstretched. Nearly every
threat we face — from Afghanistan to Al-Qaida to Iran — has grown.
In the 18 months since President Bush
announced the surge, our troops have performed heroically in bringing down the
level of violence. New tactics have protected the Iraqi population, and the
Sunni tribes have rejected Al-Qaida — greatly weakening its effectiveness.
But the same factors that led me to oppose
the surge still hold true. The strain on our military has grown, the situation
in Afghanistan has deteriorated and we’ve spent nearly $200 billion more in
Iraq than we had budgeted. Iraq’s leaders have failed to invest tens of
billions of dollars in oil revenues in rebuilding their own country, and they
have not reached the political accommodation that was the stated purpose of the
surge.
The good news is that Iraq’s leaders want
to take responsibility for their country by negotiating a timetable for the
removal of American troops. Meanwhile, Lt Gen James Dubik, the American officer
in charge of training Iraq’s security forces, estimates that the Iraqi army and
police will be ready to assume responsibility for security in 2009.
Only by redeploying our troops can we press
the Iraqis to reach comprehensive political accommodation and achieve a
successful transition to Iraqis taking responsibility for the security and
stability of their country. The Bush administration and Senator McCain are
refusing to embrace this transition — despite their previous commitments to
respect the will of Iraq’s sovereign government. They call any timetable for
the removal of American troops “surrender”, even though we would be turning
Iraq over to a sovereign Iraqi government.
But this is not a strategy for success — it
is a strategy for staying that runs contrary to the will of the Iraqi people,
the American people and the security interests of the United States. I would
give the military a new mission on my first day in office: ending this war.
We
must be as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in. We can
safely redeploy our combat brigades at a pace that would remove them in 16
months. That would be the summer of 2010 — two years from now, and more than
seven years after the war began. After this redeployment, a residual force in
Iraq would perform limited missions: going after any remnants of Al-Qaida in
Mesopotamia, protecting American service members and, so long as the Iraqis
make political progress, training Iraqi security forces. That would not be a
precipitous withdrawal.
In carrying out this strategy, we would
inevitably need to make tactical adjustments. I would consult with commanders
on the ground and the Iraqi government to ensure that our troops were
redeployed safely, and our interests protected. We would move them from secure
areas first and volatile areas later. We would pursue a diplomatic offensive
with every nation in the region on behalf of Iraq’s stability, and commit $2
billion to a new international effort to support Iraq’s refugees.
Ending the war is essential to meeting our
broader strategic goals, starting in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where the
Taliban is resurgent and Al-Qaida has a safe haven. Iraq is not the central
front in the war on terrorism, and it never has been. As Adm Mike Mullen, the chairman
of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently pointed out, we won’t have sufficient
resources to finish the job in Afghanistan until we reduce our commitment to
Iraq.
I would — as president — pursue a new
strategy, and begin by providing at least two additional combat brigades to
support our effort in Afghanistan. We need more troops, more helicopters,
better intelligence-gathering and more non-military assistance to accomplish
the mission there.
In this campaign, there are honest
differences over Iraq, and we should discuss them with the thoroughness they
deserve. I would make it absolutely clear, unlike Senator McCain, that we seek
no presence in Iraq similar to our permanent bases in South Korea, and would
redeploy our troops out of Iraq and focus on the broader security challenges
that we face. But for far too long, those responsible for the greatest
strategic blunder in the recent history of American foreign policy have ignored
useful debate in favour of making false charges about flip-flops and surrender.
It’s not going to work this time. It’s time
to end this war. — NYTNS
The
writer is the presumptive Democratic US presidential nominee.
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