The Ungrateful Nouri: Rope-A-Dope

I was startled last Wednesday night when John McCain stated confidently, at one moment in the debate, that the United States was “close to” a Status of Forces Agreement with Iraq.  Further, Barack Obama said nothing to the contrary.  Now don’t get me wrong, of course.  Pride in my “reading” of Nouri’s game-playing must take a back seat to the diplomatic advantage of…keeping our military in Iraq for another three years?  Okay, it’s not clear whether we should be rooting for the “sovereign” government of Iraq or for our own feckless ambassadors, who appear to be in over their heads.  I was virtually certain that John McCain’s opinion meant nothing, whatever else might be said.  He’s still wondering whether that Prague Spring thing has worked in Czechoslovakia.

Then this news last weekend:

BAGHDAD — Hopes that a security agreement between Iraq and the United States could be concluded swiftly receded Sunday as several of the leading Iraqi political parties, including some that had negotiated the agreement, appeared to back away from quick approval.

In a public statement posted on semiofficial government Web sites, the United Iraqi Alliance, which represents several powerful Shiite parties that back the government, said it could not endorse the pact as written and wanted amendments. It formed a committee on Saturday to survey alliance member opinions.

More details emerged on Tuesday, October 21:

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq demanded changes to a draft security pact with the United States Tuesday after it failed to win the support of its political leaders despite months of painstaking negotiations with Washington.

The announcement effectively reopens negotiations which had led last week to the unveiling of a draft that would require U.S. forces to leave Iraq by the end of 2011. The objections appear to be about details rather than the broad thrust of the pact.

Those details?  Well, it’s that jurisdictional thing: can the Iraqis try American soldiers for “serious crimes” committed in off-duty hours?  I’m sorry that I didn’t add the word “brave” as an adjective in the last sentence, as is always done in the House of Memes & Tropes, so let me amend that: can the Iraqis try our Brave American Soldiers® in Iraqi courts?

How significant a provision is this?  Very, as it turns out.  While American news outlets go light on the coverage, we’ve been having a helluva time in Okinawa over the last decade or so.  Take this story from February, 2008, concerning another SOFA agreement covering that Japanese island which does provide for local jurisdiction:

“Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, apologised yesterday for a string of crimes involving American troops based in Japan, amid warnings that failure to improve discipline risked damaging relations between Washington and one of its closest allies.

"Resentment towards the US military presence erupted this month following the arrest of a marine for the alleged rape of a 14-year-old girl on the island of Okinawa, home to more than half of the 50,000 US troops in Japan.

"Since then, US soldiers on the island have been arrested for trespassing and drink driving, and another is being questioned about the alleged rape of a Filipino woman in a hotel room.

"The rape allegation has echoes of the 1995 gang rape of a 12-year-old girl by three US servicemen, which brought 85,000 people on to the streets in protest and international attention to the US base…The Japanese prime minister, Yasuo Fukuda, called the alleged rape "unforgivable" and Shigeru Ishiba, the defence minister, warned that it could "shake the foundations" of the Japan-US alliance just as the two countries were cooperating to try to end North Korea's nuclear weapons programme.

"In an attempt to limit the diplomatic fallout, US military authorities imposed a 24-hour, indefinite curfew on 45,000 military personnel and their families, including the 10,000 who live off-base. They also agreed to review anti-sexual assault guidelines and improve education programmes for newly arrived service personnel…Critics said previous attempts to improve conduct had failed.”

That story was carried by the London-based Telegraph last February.  You may have missed it.  In Okinawa, the presence of the U.S. garrison is an ongoing crisis; yet compared to Iraq, the situation for the Brave American Soldiers® is considerably more “normal;” note the quarantine of the military and confinement to bases along with their “families.”  In Iraq, by contrast, the situation for the troops is a great deal weirder, with soldiers stranded for years on end in repeated deployments, away from home, away from normal female companionship.  We must add to this toxic mix the fact that the U.S., in order to meet recruitment goals for a worn-out army, has lowered its standards to include a small but significant fraction of soldiers with criminal records.

Thus, all the pieces are in place for a true international nightmare: a sociopathic Brave American Soldier®, with a violent history of assault, rapes and kills an Iraqi woman in Baghdad after getting roaring drunk in a local bar.  He’s arrested by Iraqi police under the SOFA provision for “serious crimes” committed intentionally.  Now what?  The fate of this soldier would be seen as the final, intolerable indignity visited upon the American “liberating” force.  This story would make the nightly news and inundate the Internet.  In general, the American public, recalling the kangaroo proceedings for Saddam Hussein, would be absolutely outraged and up in arms.  Mitigating factors (the sex was consensual, it was a trap, etc.) would be discovered or manufactured.  The idea of an armed invasion of the prison or court to free the soldier would be debated and maybe set in motion.

My guess is that the Ungrateful Nouri has already “priced in” all these considerations, as they say about the stock market.  It’s a No Go Zone for the Department of Defense; not even Bush’s delicate ego justifies running this kind of risk.  A Japanese court seems sort of civilized and Western; a court run by mullahs reminds Americans too much of “Midnight Express.” And so Nouri, keenly discerning the discomfort level of the American negotiatiors about conceding this jurisdictional point (routinely done in other SOFA arrangements) when dealing with this partiuclar Muslim nation, lets the clock keep running toward December 31, when our "legal cover," as he calls it, is blown.  A ragged, fitting denouement to a misbegotten war.