This Is Huge: Obama Pledges No Residual Forces In Iraq After 2011

By Chris Bowers

In his speech on Iraq redeployment today, President Obama pledged to have all troops, including "residual forces," by the end of 2011. This is the pledge I have been waiting for:

Let me say this as plainly as I can: by August 31, 2010, our combat mission in Iraq will end(…)

Through this period of transition, we will carry out further redeployments. And under the Status of Forces Agreement with the Iraqi government, I intend to remove all U.S. troops from Iraq by the end of 2011.

This is huge for no residual forces proponents. Now that President Obama has made this pledge, in public, it will be difficult for him to go back on it. This is especially the case since turning back on a promise with a deadline of December 31st, 2011, means violating a pledge during 2012–the year President Obama will be running for re-election.

It is frustrating that it took the Iraqi government, rather than internal anti-war pressure, to finally secure a no residual troop promise from the American government (and they actually wringing it out of the Bush administration, something Democrats were entirely unable to achieve).

Still, as someone who has opposed the Iraq war for more than six years, and who been has writing about the need for no residual American military forces in Iraq for more than two years, any promise of no residual forces from the American government, backed up by a binding agreement like the Status of Forces Agreement, it an extremely welcome development no matter how it was secured.

The Iraq war is going to end. No residual troops after 2011.

Chris Bowers was a full-time editor at MyDD from May 2004 until June 2007. Some of his projects have included the creation of the Liberal Blog Advertising Network, the first scientifically random poll of progressive netroots activists, the Use It Or Lose It campaign, the nation’s most accurate forecast of Democratic house pickups in 2006, and the 2006 Googlebomb the Elections campaign.

© 2009 Open Left All rights reserved.