A timetable to leave Iraq

After more than a year of contentious negotiations, the U.S. and Iraq this week reached an agreement calling for the withdrawal of American forces in Iraq. In a major concession by the Bush administration, the so-called Status of Forces Agreement requires U.S. troops to pull out of Iraq’s cities, towns, and villages by the end of June 2009 and to leave the country altogether by December 2011. The administration had previously opposed fixed withdrawal dates, insisting instead on a flexible “time horizon” for a U.S. pullout. The U.S. also pledged not to use Iraq as a base for attacks on neighboring countries, including Iran.

The agreement, approved by Iraq’s coalition Cabinet, leaves several issues unresolved, including whether Iraqi courts can try Americans for alleged crimes committed on Iraqi soil. Iraq’s Sunni minority is divided on the deal, and Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr has denounced it. Still, Iraq’s parliament is expected to ratify the pact.

Now the real work begins, said the Los Angeles Times in an editorial. Haggling over the Status of Forces Agreement has “been sucking the oxygen out of Iraqi politics for a year.” Now the Iraqis can “move on to other issues of nation-building.” They still haven’t figured out how to divide oil revenues among Iraq’s religious and ethnic groups or how to ensure full Sunni participation in the political process. But at least American troops can finally start to think about going home.

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It wasn’t U.S. concessions that sealed the deal, said Gary Kamiya in Salon.com. It was the U.S. election. Barack Obama’s longtime opposition to the war served to reassure Iraqis that the U.S. would stick by any troop-withdrawal agreement. How ironic, though, that this foreign-policy triumph for Bush “was made possible by the election of someone who rejects Bush’s entire approach to foreign policy.” It’s a triumph for Obama, too, said Kevin Drum in Motherjones.com. The administration’s acceptance of the deal makes Obama’s “decision to withdraw into a bipartisan agreement.”

The biggest winner, actually, may be Iran, said Andrew McCarthy in National Review Online. The pact “locks in guarantees against American reprisals despite years of Iranian provocations.” Iran’s hard-line leaders, who lobbied for the U.S. concessions, will use this deal “to spread their tentacles through Iraqi society.”