So you're saying that Barack Obama made the pursuit of a new Status of Forces Agreement a priority? An article from the New York Times back in September of 2012 paints a different picture. Take note of Vice President Joe Biden's take on the situation:
"Mr. Biden also predicted that the Americans could work out a deal with a government led by Mr. Maliki. “Maliki wants us to stick around because he does not see a future in Iraq otherwise,” Mr. Biden said. “I’ll bet you my vice presidency Maliki will extend the SOFA,” he added, referring to the
Status of Forces Agreement the Obama administration hoped to negotiate."
Or the opinion coming from the Kurds:
"To many Iraqis, the United States’ influence is greatly diminished. “American policy is very weak,” observed Fuad Hussein, the chief of staff to Massoud Barzani, the president of the semiautonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq. “It is not clear to us how they have defined their interests in Iraq,” Mr. Hussein said. “They are picking events and reacting on the basis of events. That is the policy.”
The Times sums up the failure to reach an agreement with this observation:
"Some experts say that given the Iraqis’ concerns about sovereignty, and Iranian pressure, the politicians in Baghdad were simply not prepared to make the hard decisions that were needed to secure parliamentary approval. Others say the Iraqis sensed the Americans’ ambivalence and were being asked to make unpopular political decisions for a modest military benefit."
That's the liberal New York Times stating that American "ambivalence" about keeping troops in Iraq was what was making Iraqi politicians shy away from making a correct but politically risky move to keep an American force behind after the main withdrawal. The military certainly wasn't ambivalent! They were adamant about the need to keep a force there. The ambivalence came from the President and members of his Staff.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/23/w...-last-months-in-iraq.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
And the Times ends that article with the following:
"
On Oct. 21, Mr. Obama held another videoconference with Mr. Maliki — his first such discussion since the talks began in June. The negotiations were over, and all of the American troops would be coming home.
The White House insisted that the collapse of the talks was not a setback. “As we reviewed the 10,000 option, we came to the conclusion that achieving the goal of a security partnership was not dependent on the size of our footprint in-country, and that stability in Iraq did not depend on the presence of U.S. forces,” a senior Obama administration official said.
It is too soon to fully assess that prediction. But tensions have increased to the point that Mr. Barzani has insisted Mr. Maliki be replaced and Iraq’s lone Sunni vice president has fled to Turkey to avoid arrest.
Without American forces to train and assist Iraqi commandos, the insurgent group Al Qaeda in Iraq is still active in Iraq and is increasingly involved in Syria. With no American aircraft to patrol Iraqi airspace, Iraq has become a corridor for
Iranian flights of military supplies to Bashar al-Assad’s government in Syria, American officials say. It is also a potential avenue for an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear installations, something the White House is laboring to avoid."
It's obvious WAY back then that the current problems were already rearing their ugly heads. The fact of the matter is that the Obama Administration failed miserably at getting Maliki to be inclusive with his government and then made a weak attempt at negotiating a Status of Forces Agreement. The fact that Obama didn't have talks with Maliki on that topic from June all the way until the end of October illustrates the lack of commitment that Obama had towards such an agreement.