Iraqis this week resisted Bush administration demands to hurriedly pass a status of forces agreement, or SOFA, and even took affront to the administration's hostile and threatening tone on the matter.
For example, on Oct. 22, US State Department spokesperson Robert Wood said, “It’s time for the Iraqis to step up to the plate and take a decision.” Perhaps such a demand that Iraqis "take" a decision was simply a slip, but the comment suggests the Iraqis must accept the Bush administration's version of a new SOFA.
Other top administration officials added a chorus of cajoling threats, innuendo, and promises. That same day, White House Press Secretary Dana Perino chimed in, "And if they don’t [accept the SOFA], there will be real consequences, if Americans aren’t able to operate there.” The not-so subtle threat here is that US forces would no longer operate and security gains may be lost.
More explicitly, Adm. Michael Mullen, chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, traveling in Europe earlier in the week where he felt freer to level more direct threats against the Iraqis, said that Iraq isn't ready to take up security issues alone and faced "significant" military losses if the SOFA isn't forced through.
"We would have to stop operations and leave," Mullen told reporters. "It's a big force and we couldn't leave overnight, but we would have no mandate to operate." Mullen also accused Iran of using its influence to undermine the agreement, though he offered no evidence for the claim.
For their part, Iraqi officials rejected both the tone of the Bush administration and the idea that security would collapse without US forces operating in the country. Iraqi government spokesperson Ali al-Dabbagh responded with his own sharp rejoinder. "All Iraqis and their political entities are aware of their responsibilities and are assessing whether to sign the deal or not in a way that it is suitable to them. It is not correct to force Iraqis into making a choice and it is not appropriate to talk with the Iraqis in this way," he said.
The point of contention, however, is the Bush administration's resistance to new language in the SOFA sought by the Iraqi government that would impose a timetable for withdrawal by 2011.
In other words, Bush has refused to live up to his promise to "stand down" when the Iraqis determine that the occupation should end. As a result of this stubbornness, the occupation of Iraq has lost even the slenderest veneer of legality and can only be viewed as the imperialist occupation it has been all along.
The Pentagon told reporters that seeking a new UN mandate to continue the occupation is the administration's "fall-back position." Unfortunately for them, several members of the UN Security Council with veto power, Russia and Germany, for example, are not likely to be as inclined to go along with US demands for a new mandate as they once may have been.
While the Bush administration's failure to accomplish a SOFA agreement that won the consensus of Congress and the Iraqi government may reflect its vapid strategy (and John McCain's) of "staying the course," it is nevertheless a huge failure. It highlights both the administration's lame-duck status and just one more major global problem the Bush administration got this country into and failed to solve.
