And that’s not the half of it. The post-war occupations in Japan and Germany, which supporters have pointed to in championing the democratization experiment in Iraq, featured a heavy, abiding American military presence to promote U.S. interests and regional security. By contrast, the aforementioned administration official conceded yesterday that the SOFA “forswears any U.S. bases on Iraqi soil” after 2011.
What’s more, no matter how randy the mullahs get as they build their nukes and saber-rattle against Israel and other American interests, the agreements prohibit the United States from using its current military bases in Iraq to stage operations against Iran or any other nation.
So how to explain the seemingly contradictory Iranian positions on the American/Iraqi negotiations? Well, they plainly do not reflect cut-and-dried Iranian opposition, as the administration suggests. Granted, the Iranians would prefer a complete U.S. failure in Iraq. They are more than happy, though, to take the glass half full. By mounting pressure on the Maliki government, they’ve won crucial concessions. And as time goes by, as we gradually recede and they continue (at the Maliki government’s invitation) to spread their tentacles through Iraqi society, Iran expects to win more. Hence its newly announced embrace of a SOFA that locks in guarantees against American reprisals despite Iran’s years of unanswered provocations.
FORFEITING LEGAL PROTECTIONS
Nor is that all. Because the U.S. is still widely reviled by Iraqi Muslims, Maliki insisted that his government be empowered to exercise jurisdiction over American soldiers who allegedly commit crimes in Iraq — at least to the extent such offenses occur off-base and outside official military duties. Worse, American non-military contractors have been consigned with even less protection to the Iraqi justice system, creating a powerful incentive for the contractors to cut back drastically the support services on which our strapped armed forces depend.
A joint American/Iraqi commission will continue refining the vague terms of this prosecution authority, and one hopes that due-process guarantees improve. This, however, brings to the fore another difficulty with the agreements.
The administration, arguing that the pacts are mere executive agreements, contends that no congressional legislation or Senate ratification is needed to validate them. The Constitution, however, prescribes a process for international treaties, and it vests Congress with significant powers to regulate foreign commerce, define offenses for which Americans may be held liable, and make rules for the regulation of our armed forces.
Can those powers legitimately be delegated to the executive branch through the device of an “executive agreement”? I’m skeptical, especially after living through eight years of non-stop Democrat assaults on presidential power. But perhaps the Left sees things differently now that the president’s name is about to be Obama.
WHAT ABOUT VICTORY?
More disturbing, though, is the trajectory of Iraqi politics. Maybe it is understandable that the administration, which has expended inordinate capital on Iraq’s political maturation, should celebrate the growing confidence of its government. For those of us who have never much cared whether Iraq became a democracy, more relevant are the popular currents to which Iraq’s government reacts. Those currents tell us Iraqis are more concerned about prosecuting Americans than embracing them.
That doesn’t bode well. Victory in Iraq has never meant a functioning democracy. It means defeating radical Islam, which in turn means routing al-Qaeda and leaving behind a stable Iraq that is an American ally against jihadist-sponsoring regimes like Iran. By those metrics, how are we faring?
On the plus side, al-Qaeda has been decimated in Iraq. Nevertheless, the withdrawal deadlines to which we’ve foolishly agreed give bin Laden a pathway to resurgence. Further, the incoherent approach of fighting a regional war on only two fronts has allowed the terror network to regroup in safe-havens outside Iraq.
As for Iran, it’s good to see Maliki’s government resisting domination by its neighbors to the east. Clearly, though, the Iraqis have used their leverage to shield the mullahs from U.S. attack even as Iran wages a terrorist war against American forces on Iraqi soil.
Today’s Obama euphoria will not long mask that the Iran/American conflict, far from going away, is intensifying. When the last American soldier departs in 2011, the question is: In which camp will Iraq stand? After all we’ve given, we still don’t know the answer. No matter how cleverly these new agreements are spun, that is very discouraging.
— National Review’s Andrew C. McCarthy chairs FDD’s Center for Law & Counterterrorism and is the author of Willful Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad (Encounter Books 2008).< Back 1 2 
