Center for a New American Security

According to Reuters, the 2011 date for a complete withdrawal of U.S. forces was a compromise. Looks like Bush wanted a longer stay, asking for authorization until 2015. The Iraqis countered with 2010, and the compromise was 2011. The date is not finalized, and it not clear what if any U.S. presence there might be after 2011 (since, even under Maliki's recent formulation, the Iraqis could ask us to stay longer in a support role after that.) But if you want to know why our leverage has gone down, you now know. Because Bush was begging to let us stay longer than the Iraqis wanted, we had to give the Iraqis concessions instead of vice versa to let us do so. This whole thing should have been crafted to get the Iraqis to convince us we shouldn't leave sooner and convince us we should provide them with residual support (counter-terrorism assistance, training and advising, deterrence against external foes, etc.)--but instead we begged to stay longer. Totally backasswards. It also points to the significant downsides of any presidential candidate signaling that he would like to stay for a long, long time (a decades-long "Korea-style" presence, for example). If the next president tells the Iraqis this is what he wants, the Iraqis will be extracting concessions from us when it should be the other way around.