Democratically, Iraqis may kick out Americans

By Max J. Castro
majcastro@gmail.com

The advocates of the Iraq war said U.S. soldiers would be received with flowers and candies. That never happened. Now, more than 4,000 American and a hundred thousand or more Iraqi lives later, the Iraqi people may finally get the chance to decide on the American presence. That’s because Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s cabinet is submitting a draft law to parliament asking it to authorize and fund a referendum on the bilateral agreement that regulates the presence of U.S. troops.

The referendum would be held during next January’s national election. The vote was supposed to take place in July, but the Iraqi government has delayed the context apparently out of fear that Iraqis would disapprove the status of forces agreement that allows U.S. troops to stay in the country through December 2011. If that happens, U.S. troops would have to leave the country one year earlier.

That outcome, which observers think is almost guaranteed, would be a major embarrassment for the U.S. and Iraqi governments. The U.S. government has been lobbying the Iraqis to forego the referendum. But the referendum was part of the larger status of forces agreement negotiated last year and some Iraqi political leaders have begun to demand that it be held.

U.S. officials have lobbied the Iraqi government to suspend plans to hold the referendum, because they’re all but certain voters would annul the agreement. It would be a huge public relations fiasco if an overwhelming number of Iraqis were to vote to kick out the Americans. And media reports indicate that any measure to curb American influence in Iraq is likely to appeal to a large segment of the electorate.

A negative vote would imply that today U.S. forces in Iraq are there against the will of the Iraqi people. After more than 4,000 American deaths and an enormous monetary expenditure for the ostensible reason of bringing democracy to Iraq and the rest of the Middle East, it would be a tremendous irony and a blow to American pride to be tossed out as a result of the votes of the Iraqi people in a democratic election.