Wednesday, June 06, 2007

Yet another deadline

It's not widely publicised that the multinational forces in Iraq are operating under a UN resolution, passed after the invasion.1 This resolution has provided an element of legitimacy, to the extent that one can speak of such a thing in this context, to what is essentially a US/UK military presence, and it has served other narrower purposes, such as, for example, allowing Ireland to claim that it is only allowing Shannon to be used as a transit stop for US military flights because of the UN resolution.

Anyway, enter into the fray the political party of Moqtada al-Sadr, the all-purpose scapegoat for the failures of the US policy in Iraq, to --

[push] through a resolution in parliament requiring the Baghdad government to obtain legislative approval for future extensions of the U.N. mandate for U.S.-led forces in Iraq.

The current mandate doesn't expire until Dec. 31, but Tuesday's action added to the debate — in Baghdad and Washington — over whether and when U.S. troops should be pulled out.


Now perhaps there'll be enough of a coalition to ram through the legislative approval in time, but if not, the Bush bluff that he'll only stay in Iraq with the affirmation of the Iraqi government would be called.

UPDATE 1 SEPTEMBER: An op-ed in the New York Times notes the problem.

1The full sequence of post-invasion resolutions is explained here.

No comments: