President George W. Bush, May 1, 2003

"This is mission accomplished."

Senator John McCain on Saddam Hussein’s capture, December 14, 2003

"We’re telling you [the Iraqi government], there’s [sic] been votes in both houses of Congress which portend, unless the American people see measurable success, that we’re going to be out of [Iraq] [n]o matter whether I happen to agree with it or not."

Senator John McCain, April 14, 2007

"The Iraq War has left us less safe than we were before 9/11. Osama bin Ladin and his top lieutenants have rebuilt a new base in Pakistan where they freely train recruits, plot new attacks, and disseminate propaganda. The Taliban is resurgent in Afghanistan. Iran has emerged as the greatest strategic challenge to America in the Middle East in a generation. Violent extremism has increased. Terrorism has increased. All of that is a cost of this war."

Senator Barack Obama, September 12, 2007

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Looking at the statements above, one does not need to be a political sage to see that the U.S. military will not stay in Iraq for too long. If Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic nominee who has spoken against the Iraq war since Day One, wins in November, U.S. forces will probably be out before the end of 2009.

Even if Sen. McCain wins, with a likely Democratic control of Congress, that will not be enough to keep the United States militarily in Iraq. The Arizona Republican, who, until recently, had stated that his country could stay in Iraq for 100 years, has moderated his tone (his latest prediction is that the U.S. might leave by 2013). Given the unpopularity of the Iraq war in America, and despite the statistics that violence and U.S. combat deaths are decreasing, Mr. McCain is coming closer to his opponents’ position that the most sensible solution to America’s problems in Iraq is to bring back American troops as soon as possible.

The most serious impact of the inevitable U.S. withdrawal from Iraq will be on the choices that Iraqi leaders face. How are they to salvage the future of their country by becoming less reliant on the Americans?

In a word: oil. It is Iraq’s primary source of income, yet the Iraqi parliament has still not passed the oil bill that would determine how the proceeds of the strategic commodity would be distributed. Central Iraq, where most of the country’s Sunni Arabs live, is not as oil-rich as the north and the south. Iraqi Kurds, who live in the north, and the Shiite Arabs, who dominate the south, are reluctant to split their share with the Sunnis. That is the crux of the problem.

President George Bush had promised a year and a half ago that one of the “benchmarks” for keeping U.S. troops in Iraq would be passing the oil bill from the Iraqi parliament. Mr. Bush’s myriad problems have allowed Iraqi legislators to procrastinate, but they are running out of time. In less than seven or eight months, they may find themselves fighting various insurgent groups with fewer American troops, if at all.

What does the oil bill have to do with it? If passed, it would clarify where the country’s petrodollars would go. That would fill the coffers of both the central administration in Baghdad and the provincial governments throughout the country. The implications of greater financial means for the security situation are obvious: Better-paid and better-equipped Iraqi forces would do a much better job against insurgents than foreign armies and mercenaries.

More significantly, however, an improvement in the state’s financial situation would allow Iraq to re-build its social services (which were world-class before the First Gulf War, as I personally witnessed as a boy over twenty years ago). With jobs to work, schools to attend, and hospitals to go to when sick, fewer Iraqis will commit their lives to violence.

The civil war in Iraq can end if and only if it can be proven that there is a better future for the people of Iraq than the ongoing bloodshed. Passing the oil bill is the key to that objective.

In the final analysis, these statements may seem banal, as many observers have repeated them time and again. But just because something has become cliché does not mean it lacks validity. The situation in Iraq cannot get any worse if the platitudes above replace those advocated by the Bush administration. Senators Obama and McCain would do a great service to their country and the people of Iraq if, during their election campaigns, they signal to Iraqi leaders that they have to move forward with the oil bill.

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Barın Kayaoğlu is a Ph.D. candidate in history at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Virginia and a regular contributor to the Journal of Turkish Weekly.

E-mail: kayaoglu@virginia.edu

10 June 2008