WASHINGTON - Seventeen months after President Barack Obama pledged to withdraw
all combat brigades from Iraq by September 1, 2010, he quietly abandoned that
pledge on Monday, admitting implicitly that such combat brigades would remain
until the end of 2011.
Obama declared in a speech to disabled US veterans in Atlanta that "America's
combat mission in Iraq" would end by the end of August, to be replaced by a
mission of "supporting and training Iraqi security forces".
That statement was in line with the pledge he had made on
February 27, 2009, when he said, "Let me say this as plainly as I can: by
August 31, 2010, our combat mission in Iraq will end."
In the sentence preceding that pledge, however, he had said, "I have chosen a
timeline that will remove our combat brigades over the next 18 months." Obama
said nothing in his speech on Monday about withdrawing "combat brigades" or
"combat troops" from Iraq until the end of 2011.
Even the concept of "ending the US combat mission" may be highly misleading,
much like the concept of "withdrawing US combat brigades" was in 2009.
Under the administration's definition of the concept, combat operations will
continue after August 2010, but will be defined as the secondary role of US
forces in Iraq. The primary role will be to "advise and assist" Iraqi forces.
An official who spoke with Inter Press Service (IPS) on condition that his
statements would be attributed to a "senior administration official"
acknowledged that the 50,000 US troops remaining in Iraq beyond the deadline
would have the same combat capabilities as the combat brigades that have been
withdrawn.
The official also acknowledged that the troops would engage in some combat but
suggested that the combat would be "mostly" for defensive purposes. That
language implied that there might be circumstances in which US forces would
carry out offensive operations as well.
IPS has learned, in fact, that the question of what kind of combat US troops
might become involved in depends in part on the Iraqi government, which will
still be able to request offensive military actions by US troops if it feels it
necessary.
Obama's jettisoning of one of his key campaign promises and of a high-profile
pledge early in his administration without explicit acknowledgement highlights
the way in which language on national security policy can be manipulated for
political benefit with the acquiescence of the news media.
Obama's apparent pledge of withdrawal of combat troops by the September 1
deadline in his February 27, 2009, speech generated headlines across the
commercial news media. That allowed the administration to satisfy its anti-war
Democratic Party base on a pivotal national security policy issue.
At the same time, however, it allowed Obama to back away from his campaign
promise on Iraq withdrawal, and to signal to those political and bureaucratic
forces backing a long-term military presence in Iraq that he had no intention
of pulling out all combat troops at least until the end of 2011.
He could do so because the news media were inclined to let the apparent Obama
withdrawal pledge stand as the dominant narrative line, even though the
evidence indicated it was a falsehood.
Only a few days after the Obama speech, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was
more forthright about the policy. In an appearance on Meet the Press on
March 1, 2009, Gates said the "transition force" remaining after August 31,
2010, would have "a very different kind of mission", and that the units
remaining in Iraq "will be characterized differently".
"They will be called advisory and assistance brigades," said Gates. "They won't
be called combat brigades."
But "advisory and assistance brigades" were configured with the same combat
capabilities as the "combat brigade teams" which had been the basic US military
unit of combat organization for six years, as IPS reported in March 2009.
Gates was thus signaling that the military solution to the problem of Obama's
combat troop withdrawal pledge had been accepted by the White House.
That plan had been developed in late 2008 by General David Petraeus, the
Central Command chief, and General Ray Odierno, the top commander in Iraq, who
were determined to get Obama to abandon his pledge to withdraw all US combat
brigades from Iraq within 16 months of taking office.
They came up with the idea of "remissioning" - sticking a non-combat label on
the combat brigade teams - as a way for Obama to appear to be delivering on his
campaign pledge while actually abandoning it.
The "remissioning" scheme was then presented to Obama by Gates and chairman of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen in Chicago on December 15, 2008,
according a report in the New York Times three days later.
It was hardly a secret that the Obama administration was using the
"remissioning" ploy to get around the political problem created by his acceding
to military demands to maintain combat troops in Iraq for nearly three more
years.
Despite the fact that the disparity between Obama's public declaration and the
reality of the policy was an obvious and major political story, however, the
news media - including the New York Times, which had carried multiple stories
about the military's "remissioning" scheme - failed to report on it.
The "senior administration official" told IPS that Obama is still "committed to
withdrawal of all US forces by the end of 2011". That is the withdrawal
deadline in the US-Iraq withdrawal agreement of November 2008.
But the same military and Pentagon officials who prevailed on Obama to back
down on his withdrawal pledge also have pressed in the past for continued US
military presence in Iraq beyond 2011, regardless of the US withdrawal
agreement with the Iraqi government.
In November 2008, after Obama's election, Odierno was asked by Washington Post
correspondent Tom Ricks "what the US military presence would look like around
2014 or 2015". Odierno said he "would like to see a force probably around
30,000 or so, 35,000", which would still be carrying out combat operations.
Last February, Odierno requested that a combat brigade be stationed in Kirkuk
to avoid an outbreak of war involving Kurdish and Iraqi forces vying for the
region's oil resources - and that it be openly labeled as such - according to
Ricks.
In light of the fact that Obama had already agreed to Odierno's "remissioning"
dodge, the only reason for such a request would be to lay the groundwork for
keeping a brigade there beyond the 2011 withdrawal deadline.
Obama brushed off the proposal, according to Ricks, but it was unclear whether
the reason was that Iraqi political negotiations over a new government were
still ongoing.
In July, Odierno suggested that a United Nations peacekeeping force might be
needed in Kirkuk after 2011, along with a hint that a continued US presence
there might be requested by the Iraqi government.
Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specializing
in US national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book,
Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam, was
published in 2006.
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