Abstract
On 15 December 2011, in a fortified compound at Baghdad International Airport, US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta oversaw the formal end of America’s military presence in Iraq. The event marked the final departure of US troops, eight years and nine months after the invasion. Panetta’s farewell speech was sober and downbeat. He placed a great deal of emphasis on the sacrifices that Iraqis and Americans had made. However, given that the George W. Bush administration had placed the political and economic transformation of Iraq at the centre of its war aims, Panetta’s description of what the mission had ultimately achieved was decidedly modest. Iraq, he said, could now:
govern and secure itself … the Iraqi army and police have been rebuilt and they are capable of responding to threats; violence levels are down; al Qaeda has been weakened; the rule of law has been strengthened; educational opportunities have been expanded; and economic growth is expanding.
The restraint of Panetta’s speech was understandable, for two reasons. Firstly, it was Iraqi political opinion that finally forced US troops out of the country. The Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), negotiated by the Bush administration in 2008, set the end of 2011 as the deadline for the removal of all US forces. Under its rubric US combat troops left Iraq’s towns and cities in June 2009. To meet his election promises, President Barack Obama then accelerated the removal of all American combat forces from Iraq by August 2010. However, by April 2011, it was clear that the US government was keen to renegotiate the SOFA to allow between 10,000 and 20,000 American troops to remain past the original deadline. Both the then Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen visited Baghdad in an attempt to gain permission from the Iraqi government to allow troops to stay, to secure legal protection for them from Iraqi law and gain approval from the Iraqi parliament. In late May, Gates indicated that the United States wanted to keep a minimum of 8,000 soldiers in the country after December 2011 to meet its ongoing commitments to train Iraqi forces.However, Iraq’s ruling elite would not tolerate this. As early as December 2010, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki made this apparent: ‘the withdrawal of forces agreement expires on December 31, 2011. The last American soldier will leave Iraq.’ By October 2011, it was even clearer that senior members of Iraq’s ruling coalition, constrained by Iraqi popular opinion, could not give the US military even the minimum terms they needed to remain in the country.In effect, American troops would be forced out of Iraq.
 
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