Amir Taheri predicts that the Status of Forces Agreement between Iraq and the U.S. will pass the Iraqi Parliament with more than a two-thirds majority.
With the SOFA so obviously popular in Iraq, Tehran has softened its opposition to it these last few days. Most Iraqi observers now expect SOFA to pass with more than a two-thirds majority.
The agreement opens the door for officially ending Iraq's dispute with the United Nations, which started with Saddam Hussein's August 1990 invasion of Kuwait. Iraq would be released from UN sanctions, regaining its full sovereignty.
It also gives Iraq three years during which it will hold two crucial sets of elections. Local government elections, to be held on Jan. 31, will allow a new post-Saddam generation of leaders to secure a popular mandate. Parliamentary elections, to be held in 2010, should foster the emergence of proper parties competing through political programs rather than sectarian lists of candidates.
Beginning in January, SOFA gives Iraq three years in which to complete building its new democratic army. By mid-2009, the new army should have replaced all foreign troops in urban areas while the remaining four of the 18 provinces come under Iraqi government control.
The pact will deny America's various enemies - from al Qaeda to the Khomeinist regime - an opportunity to claim that they forced the Americans out of Iraq. It also will enable America to consolidate its victory in Iraq by ensuring that the democratic institutions created since 2003 are safeguarded in new elections.
The US had two key objectives in Iraq:
* To dismantle what was left of Saddam Hussein's war machine, ensuring that it wasn't rebuilt and used against Iraq's neighbors or other nations.
* To restore to the people of Iraq the power that had been confiscated from them by the Ba'athist dictatorship.
Both have been achieved, ensuring a clear US victory - although many in Washington seem to believe that it would be impolite or impolitic to admit that. It is one of those ironies of history that Barack Obama, who opposed toppling Saddam Hussein, now inherits this victory.
America also benefits from the fact that, by signing SOFA, it shows that it isn't a fickle friend - that its commitment to allies isn't cast aside as a result of a change at the White House.
I think Taheri is overly generous to the incoming Oval Office Occupant. Obama would be quite content to cast our Iraqi allies aside, but he's been boxed in, first by the victorious surge troops, and now by the S.O.F.A. It will gall the Democrats mightily to know George Bush has achieved what he set out to do. It should be entertaining to watch the ways in which their denial manifests itself.
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