Trump's Biggest Nightmare! "Punish" him by making it easier for him to withdraw American troops from a Middle Eastern country.
How will they torture Trump next? By greenlighting construction of a new Trump hotel and casino in downtown Baghdad?
Read the fine print. It was only the Shiite MPs who showed up to vote; the Sunni and Kurdish members, totaling not quite half the chamber, boycotted despite threats from Iranian-sponsored militias that anyone who declined to support the measure would be
considered a traitor. And that’s not all:
The legislation threads a fine needle: While using strong language demanding that the government “end any foreign presence on Iraqi soil and prevent the use of Iraqi airspace, soil and water for any reason” by foreign forces, it gives no timetable for doing so.
It would end the mission approved in 2014 that gave the United States the explicit task of helping the Iraqi forces to fight the Islamic State. That agreement gave the Americans substantial latitude to launch attacks and use Iraqi airspace. But the measure would leave in place the Strategic Framework Agreement, which allows an American troop presence in Iraq.
All today’s vote did is attempt to
formally withdraw Iraq from the coalition to defeat ISIS. If Iraq leaves the coalition then the reason for allowing U.S. troops to be stationed in the country — defeating ISIS — evaporates. It’s an indirect way, in other words, of signaling that Americans (and other foreign troops) should leave. And it’s not even binding law. It would become law if the Iraqi prime minister, Adel Abdul Mahdi, signed it, which he’s given every indication of doing. But
there’s a catch:
Lawmakers responded by passing a nonbinding resolution calling on the government to end the foreign troop presence in Iraq. The United States and Iraq cooperate under a strategic framework agreement whose cancellation requires binding legislation. Iraq’s caretaker government is not legally authorized to sign such a law, Iraqi legal experts said.
Why is Abdul Mahdi part of a “caretaker government” in the first place? Because: He’s Iran’s boy, and Iraqis have grown tired of being governed by Iran’s boys. He came to power, and was protected while in power, due to the efforts of the now smoked Qassem Soleimani, who
brokered the deal that installed him as PM and then leaned on various political factions inside Iraq to
stick with him. That didn’t sit well with Iraqis who already resent Iranian domination; two months of mass protests followed and eventually forced Abdul Mahdi
to resign. He remains in office for the time being while the country tries to figure out how to form a new government that’s acceptable-ish to all factions.
So today’s resolution was championed by an Iranian stooge and ratified by Shiites who are either allied with Iran themselves or too fearful at a fraught moment to defy Iran’s demands that the U.S. be rebuked. Media coverage that fails to note those sectarian wrinkles in the politics of the vote is as skewed as some of the reporting last week alleging that “demonstrators” attacked the U.S. embassy in Baghdad. Those weren’t demonstrators, they were militiamen backed by Iran and led by a guy who himself ended up painted across the asphalt next to Soleimani in Thursday night’s airstrike.
Why such weak tea of a "resolution"? Iraqi Shiites don't have the power to get overly aggressive on
Iran’s behalf. The more emphatically they side with Tehran against the U.S., the more of a divide forms with Iraqi Kurds and Sunnis. We've had several months of mass protests against Iranian hegemony over Iraq, with even plenty of young Shiites participating. If they push Iran’s agenda too hard, the protesters might get even more pissed off and the country even further destabilized. So they gave their Iranian masters a half-measure.
To be honest, even the Shiite don't want the United States to leave much more than the Sunnis and Kurds do. Losing U.S. military support — and money — makes preventing the revival of ISIS that much harder. Having American troops nearby provides a political counterweight to Iran’s influence. The American presence helps maintain a certain balance of power, Iraqi Shiite leaders, who are Arab, do not share the Persian Shiite Leaders desire to rule politically. Ayatollah Sistani has no desire to be a political ruler. The Americans in country give them much more room to maneuver than they’d have if Iran could do as they please in Iraq. With us there, Shiite leaders play both sides to some extent. They know full well that with US gone, Iran would turn them into a vassal state.
