About those 16 months ….

posted at 2:34 pm on December 18, 2008 by Ed Morrissey
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If the Left finds its panties in a bunch over Rick Warren’s participation in Barack Obama’s inauguration, they’ll absolutely flip over the latest recommendations for troop withdrawals from Iraq.  Generals David Petraeus and Ray Odierno outlined a plan to remove combat troops that would miss Barack Obama’s sixteen-month pledge by a significant period of time to Robert Gates and Joint Chiefs chair Admiral Mike Mullen.  The latter two gave Obama the outline but not the details in a national-security meeting this week:

A new military plan for troop withdrawals from Iraq that was described in broad terms this week to President-elect Barack Obama falls short of the 16-month timetable Mr. Obama outlined during his election campaign, United States military officials said Wednesday.

The plan was proposed by the top American commanders responsible for Iraq, Gen. David H. Petraeus and Gen. Ray Odierno, and it represents their first recommendation on troop withdrawals under an Obama presidency. While Mr. Obama has said he will seek advice from his commanders, their resistance to a faster drawdown could present the new president with a tough political choice between overruling his generals or backing away from his goal.

The plan, completed last week, envisions withdrawing two more brigades, or some 7,000 to 8,000 troops, from Iraq in the first six months of 2009, the military officials said. But that would leave 12 combat brigades in Iraq by June 2009, and while declining to be more specific, the officials made clear that the withdrawal of all combat forces under the generals’ recommendations would not come until some time after May 2010, Mr. Obama’s target.

Sixteen months was about as quickly as anyone could imagine pulling out the American forces in Iraq, and that involved forgetting about the safety and security of the Iraqis.  Now that Obama has the burden of command — and the responsibility for what follows afterward — he will likely get a lot more pragmatic about withdrawals and future relationships with Iraq.  In fact, given the agreement signed and approved by the elected government in Baghdad, there seems to be little reason to pull out any faster than outlined in the SOFA.  The Iraqis want a slower transition, and casualties have dropped to almost zero.

Obama can overrule Petraeus and Odierno, of course, and demand a tighter withdrawal schedule.  He might risk a resignation from the popular commander if he pushes too hard, though, and Obama needs Petraeus for Afghanistan.  Obama will almost certainly make a political calculation that the motion will suffice in the long run, rather than meeting target dates, and the ongoing withdrawal will be enough to satisfy his base.

Would he be correct?  Until the Rick Warren kerfuffle, I’d have said yes.  Watching the Left get irrational about Obama’s attempt to reach out to the center, which is where Warren more or less lives politically, makes me wonder whether they will streak towards marginalizing themselves in the Obama coalition even faster than we might have believed.

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