• Michael Tomasky wonders why liberal donors haven’t been more aggressive in countering the tea party: “The stupid, feckless Democrats, from Obama on down, have to do something about this. And liberal donors, too. They are not responding to this moment at all. No one is creating groups and efforts to counter the tea party. That takes money and imagination and initiative.”
• Jon Avlon digs into American history and sees many echoes of Glenn Beck: “Here’s the good news: We have faced down forces of demagoguery before. The damage they do can be limited by our determination to call them out, standing up to extremes wherever we see them, stopping the politics of incitement before it leads to something ugly and indelible.”
• Wendy Kopp sees progress in education reform, but argues more hard work lies ahead: “Despite my optimism about the potential to change educational outcomes, I worry that we underestimate the work that lies ahead. Without the willpower, capacity and patience to carry out the hard work, good policies are mere pieces of paper.”
• Bill Gates (via Andrew Revkin) defends his call for massive investment in energy R&D: “Our renewable portfolio, as it exists now, is not good enough to get us where we need to be. Without R&D investments, we are not going to be able to address climate problems in time. “
• Hooman Majd tackles the claim that sanctions are sowing discord among Iranian leaders: At a base level, it ignores the long history of clashes and rivalry between strong personalities in government and among the ayatollahs. Moreover, history has shown that outside threats tend to create unity rather than divisions among Tehran’s leadership; that unity does not need to be coerced.

I wrote a quick piece the other day about what to watch for coming out of these talks.  In terms of body language and messaging, everyone’s saying the right things.

When the talks get down to specifics, what should we look for?  Martin Indyk has a smart column at The Daily Beast where he lays down some critical markers.  The first, as I’ve discussed previously, is the September 26th deadline to lift the moratorium on construction in Israeli settlements in the West Bank.  Getting Netanyahu to give even an inch on his pledge to lift it would be a big win for Abbas.  Finding a face-saving way so Bibi’s right-ist coalition partners don’t abandon him is this trick.

Indyk’s proposal might just do it:

Obama should use the limited time available before the settlement moratorium actually expires at the end of this month to focus the negotiators on defining the western border of the Palestinian state. The Palestinians have already agreed in previous negotiations to the principle that some settlement blocs will be annexed to Israel as part of a land swap. If negotiators can agree on which blocs will be absorbed by Israel, settlement activity can continue there, while the moratorium is extended everywhere else.

I think that’s mostly right.  Defining the final boarders is only one of the elements to a negotiated solution, but resolving a first issue to both parties’ satisfaction would be an incredible confidence-building measure.

The elephant in the room is Jerusalem, whose final status will remain one of the most contentious matters.  A way forward might include negotiating a solution for the rest of the West Bank and the handful of Israeli settlements in suburban Jerusalem, like Gilo, that both sides know will one day be part of Israel.  The city’s political composition can wait for another day.

Photo credit: Cyber Andy’s photostream

Steve Clemons writes:

I hope David Frum is right and that the Tea Party movement, which is growing in numbers and ferocity, will hit its limit, experience an Icarus moment, and plunge back into the fringe of American politics where pugnacious, jingoistic, narrow band nationalism has always lurked.

But Clemons is skeptical: “But there is no guarantee of this,” he writes, citing a prominent funder, who frets that “their political loss didn’t teach the Republicans anything; they actually got much worse.”

Kevin Drum chimes in with faith in the political pendulum that always swings back:

I think Frum is right and the mega-funder just needs to have a bit more patience. Parties rarely move to the center immediately after a big defeat. Usually it takes two or three before they finally get the message, and on that metric Republicans aren’t due for a move to the center until sometime after 2012.

Sure, when a party keeps losing, eventually there is a move to shake it up. But the problem is that Republicans are winning doing this, which the wingnuts in the party will surely interpret as a vindication for their, errr, patriotic turn.

But I’m still optimistic that the Tea Party movement does have a limited shelf life. Here’s why:

In all likelihood, at least some of these tea party candidates are going to actually have to govern.  Mike Lee is up by 25  points in Utah; Rand Paul is up almost 10 points in Kentucky; Joe Miller, Marco Rubio, Ken Buck are all leading as well in polls.

And governing is more difficult than campaigning.  Once in Congress, these wild turks won’t be able to deliver on their outrageous promises of ending big government and repealing healthcare. This will likely provoke disillusionment and then infighting among Tea Party types as to whether to find a new breed of “purer” Tea Partiers, or to remain loyal to their existing leaders. Disillusionment and infighting will sap the Tea Party movement of energy.

Additionally, Tea Party legislators, especially in the Senate, will effectively grind the wheels of governance to a halt. Moderate voters, who are now fed up with Democrats for not fixing the economy in two years, will still want somebody to blame for a sluggish economy. And this new batch of Tea Party fanatics, who like to run off their mouths into the deep recesses of ridiculousness, will now find that being accountable makes them the hunted rather than the hunters.

In many ways, this is just the latest step in a decades-long ratcheting up of opposition political rhetoric and promises. The party out of power always promises that there are simple solutions to hard problems that will solve everything, and accuses the party in power of being just too corrupt, incompetent, or whatever to see that. But of course hard problems actually have hard solutions, and the problems now are harder than before and the solutions are even harder. In short: it’s probably a bad time to be overpromising.

Photo credit: adulau’s photo stream

In endorsing Miller on behalf of his Senate Conservatives Fund, Jim DeMint emphasized this dimension of Murkowski’s defeat:

Joe Miller’s victory should be a wake-up call to politicians who go to Washington to bring home the bacon. Voters are saying ‘We’re not willing to bankrupt the country to benefit ourselves.’

Now it wouldn’t be quite right to accept DeMint’s characterization of either Alaska voters’ motivations or Miller’s ideology at face value. After all, when Miller calls for abolishing the federal Department of Energy, he’s appealing to the rather selfish desire of Alaskans to control their “own” energy resources–whose value is a lot higher than any federal earmark– regardless of what it means nationally.

But it’s true that there’s an element of collective self-denial among those conservatives who are genuinely willing to take on federal spending categories that are popular among their constituents. Miller is just the latest of a number of Republican Senate candidates this year who have called for phasing out Social Security and Medicare. DeMint himself has long described these programs, along with public education, as having seduced middle-class Americans into socialist ways of thinking.

As Republican pols from Barry Goldwater to George W. Bush can tell you, going after Social Security and Medicare is really bad politics. And they’ve yet to come up with a gimmick, whether it’s “partial privatization” or grandfathering existing beneficiaries, to make major changes in these programs popular (I seriously doubt the very latest gimmick, “voucherizing” Medicare, will do any better once people understand the idea). Indeed, Republicans notably engaged in their own form of “Medagoguery” by attacking health care reform as a threat to Medicare benefits.

Yet the sudden Tea Party-driven return to fiscal hawkery among Republicans, particularly if it’s not accompanied by any willingness to consider tax increases or significant defense spending cuts, will drive the GOP again and again to “entitlement reform.” In Senate candidates like Rand Paul and Sharron Angle and now Joe Miller, we are seeing the return of a paleoconservative perspective in the GOP that embraces the destruction of the New Deal/Great Society era’s most important accomplishments not just as a matter of fiscal necessity but as a moral imperative.

You can respect this point of view even if you abhor its practical implications. But there’s little doubt it represents political folly of potentially massive dimensions. Certainly Democrats owe it to these brave conservatives to take them seriously in their desire to free middle-class seniors from the slavery of Social Security and Medicare, and draw as much attention to it as possible.

Photo credit: Steve Rhodes’ photostream

This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist

• Khaled Elgindy calls for more attention to the internal Palestinian division and the regional dimension of the peace process: “For the peace process to be truly comprehensive, however, it must also address the need for a unified Palestinian polity as well as allow for progress on the regional level. Such a “grand bargain” is admittedly an ambitious undertaking—requiring not only that all key actors get something but that each has a stake in the others getting something as well—and may in fact be too difficult to achieve.”
• David Leonhardt examines whether to make teacher performance metrics public, as the Los Angeles Times did: “Some teachers, no doubt, are being done a disservice. Then again, so were a whole lot of students.”
• Jean Pisani-Ferry warns of the dangers of historical analogizing in charting a path to economic recovery: “History can be an essential compass when past experience provides unambiguous headings. But an undisciplined appeal to history risks becoming a confusing way to express opinions. Governance by analogy can easily lead to muddled governance.”
• Mark Muro and Sarah Rahman (.pdf) call for the federal government to begin constructing  and funding an Intermountain West network energy research and innovation centers: “Organized around existing capacities in a hub-spoke structure that links fundamental science with innovation and commercialization, these research centers would engage universities, industries and labs to work around specific energy themes to rapidly deploy new technologies to the marketplace, build the region’s knowledge-base, and stimulate economic development.”
• E.J. Dionne Jr. hopes Obama can turn the page after the Iraq speech: “the real test of whether Obama succeeded will not be the reception of this single address but whether it becomes the prelude to an invigorated presidency that uses the end of combat operations in Iraq to rekindle the aspirations for change that won him power in the first place.”

Yesterday morning, that’s what we were wondering around the PPI offices — would Obama thank President Bush during his Iraq address that night?  I had a conversation with my colleague Lindsay Lewis, who had just heard White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs mention that Obama was scheduled to call Bush that afternoon.  Might Obama directly thank Bush for adopting “the surge”, which, as the incomplete political narrative goes, was responsible for the decrease in violence in Iraq in 2007?

If he was explicit in his praise, I felt that the left would be apoplectic.  DailyKos and HuffPo headlines would read “The Jerk THANKED Bush”, not “Obama Fulfills Campaign Pledge.”  As polls indicate Democrats’ looming losses this November, that’s not what the administration wants floating around its mysteriously disenchanted base.

Lindsay, ever the astute politico, noted that by paying tribute to Bush, Obama was playing long-ball:  If he were to thank Bush, Obama would be positioning himself as a post-partisan Commander-In-Chief.  In political terms, he’d be positioning himself for the reelect.

Turns out that Lindsay wasn’t far off, and Obama even did him one-better: The president threaded a very fine needle that mollified critics on left and right:

This afternoon, I spoke to former President George W. Bush.  It’s well known that he and I disagreed about the war from its outset.  Yet no one can doubt President Bush’s support for our troops, or his love of country and commitment to our security.  As I’ve said, there were patriots who supported this war, and patriots who opposed it.  And all of us are united in appreciation for our servicemen and women, and our hopes for Iraqis’ future.

Turns out he didn’t go so far as to thank Bush, which keeps the focus on fulfilling his campaign pledge for the progressive base, but he succeeded in praising Bush enough to mute conservative critique and position himself as a post-partisan leader.  If you’ll pardon the phrase, Mission: Accomplished.

The conservative intelligensia are split.  Here Max Boot sounding… magnanimous, even:

I thought that this speech was about as good as we could expect from an opponent of the Iraq war — and better than Obama has done in the past. He even (for the first time?) held out an olive branch to his predecessor. … There was only a brief mention of Afghanistan, but what he said was pretty good.

Here’s Bill Kristol, sharing the love:

I thought his speech was on the whole commendable, and even at times impressive. … Not a bad tribute to the troops, and not a bad statement of the importance and indispensability of hard power. And, on the whole, not a bad speech by the president.

Truth be told, I’m happy to see them giving credit where credit is due.

Of course, every conservative didn’t feel so gooey inside.  Here’s Jennifer Rubin:

Obama is still candidate Obama, never tiring of reminding us that he kept his campaign pledge and ever eager to push aside foreign policy challenges so he can get on with the business of remaking America. All in all, it was what we were promised it would not be — self-serving, disingenuous, ungracious, and unreassuring.

And Jonah Goldberg:

I really disliked it…. If you read this closely, what Obama is saying is that not only do we owe it to the troops to rally around his discredited and partisan economic agenda (“It’s our turn”), not only is it a test of our patriotism to sign on with his environmental and industrial planning schemes, but that doing so “must be our central mission as a people.” I find everything about that offensive.

The point is that on some level, Obama succeeded in presenting himself as a post-partisan Commander-in-Chief.  Of course, anyone can concoct a reason why not to like a speech given by the president of a different political persuasion.  So while Rubin and Goldberg’s reactions are stock and trade, drawing even faint praise from the likes of Bill Kristol is a remarkable and welcome milestone.

Iraq, in fact, may be the reason Obama is President. During the 2008 campaign, the very green Junior Senator from Illinois used his opposition to the war to distinguish himself from more experienced rivals like Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden. His anti-war credentials allowed him to ride the powerful tide of anti-Bush sentiment among progressives. It also buttressed his claims to be a Washington outsider, the most authentic agent of political change in the race. This appealed to independents.

So it’s little wonder that Obama takes his pledge to end the Iraq war very seriously. He undoubtedly regards it as a matter of keeping faith with his core supporters. At the same time, he was careful not to inflame old passions over the war. On the contrary, he rightly praised U.S. troops for their skill and valor, offered a graceful salute to his predecessor, and urged the country to move on.

In this respect, the speech was probably the most genuinely “post partisan” of his presidency. But it also raised questions about what Obama really thinks about the war.  He noted that U.S. troops, at tremendous sacrifice, toppled one of the world’s worst tyrants and gave Iraq a chance to embrace “a different destiny.” Does that mean he disagrees with the New York Times’ characterization of Iraq as a “tragic, pointless war”? Obama sounded ambiguous on the question of whether it was all worth it, but such reticence probably comes with the job of being President.

Whether the public will regard his declaration as an important milestone is another matter. Violence in Iraq is already down, thanks at least in part to the surge that Obama initially opposed but has since implicitly endorsed by putting the same general, David Petraeus, in charge of a similar escalation in Afghanistan. What’s more, 50,000 U.S. troops will remain in Iraq for the next 16 months, and at least some of them will be fighting al Qaeda insurgents. Truth to tell, the President did little more last night that endorse the timetable set forth in the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) the Bush administration negotiated with the Iraqi government.

For Obama, the significance of this moment is that it marks the transition to Iraqi responsibility for security. That’s fine, but America can’t simply wash its hands and walk away at the end of next year. Iraq didn’t ask to be invaded, or to be plunged into the hellish sectarian violence that followed. The United States has incurred an unavoidable moral obligation to help a decent political order emerge in Iraq. If that requires revisiting the SOFA, the administration shouldn’t be inflexible on the point.

In stressing the limits of America’s responsibilities, the President also drew parallels between Iraq and Afghanistan. The United States should stay in Afghanistan only as long as it takes to build the capacity of the Afghan government and security forces to defend the country against a vicious Taliban insurgency.

Obama, in fact, seemed to be implicitly advancing a new doctrine of limited U.S. military intervention. The unstated assumption: America probably will be forced to intervene again in failing and fragile states beset by terrorism or communal conflict. But we should make no open-ended commitments to counterinsurgency and national building. But war is seldom so tidy. The United States still has troops in South Korea, 57 years after the war there ended.

In all, it was an often confusing and even contradictory speech, as Fred Kaplan captured well today. It reflected the deep ambivalence of a man who rose to prominence on the strength of his anti-war stance, and now finds himself, as Commander in Chief, responsible for bringing no less than three wars – Iraq, Afghanistan and the fight against al Qaeda – to a successful conclusion.

Photo Credit: Jurveston’s photostream

A couple of points are worth highlighting:

1)    The current car-dependent culture we have now is not a free market outcome. Lind notes that: “it is the produce of almost a century of government intervention in the transportation market.” Highways, according to Lind, only “cover 58 percent of their costs from user fees, including the gasoline tax.”

2)    Public transit is a real driver of economic development or redevelopment. (Lind cites Portland, OR and Kenosha, WI as cities that got a real boost from putting in a streetcar line)

3)    Public transit helps advance energy independence.

4)    And if the first conservative political virtue is prudence, as Russell Kirk advised, “there is nothing prudent about leaving most people immobile should events beyond the pale cut off our oil supply, as happened in 1973 and 1979)

Lind’s piece is one of several in a symposium on transit over at the American Conservative. And in fact, “The American Conservative’s nonprofit parent, The American Ideas Institute, will launch a new center on transportation made possible by a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation. The center will work to showcase conservative arguments for a balanced transportation system in which rail and roads complement one another.”

Lind has also written a book with conservative stalwart Paul Weyrich on this subject: Moving Minds: Conservatives and Public Transportation.

This suggests real promise on a left-right consensus on the need for meaningful investments in public transit. Progressives ought to pay attention.

Photo credit: Oran Virincy’s photostream

• Kevin Carey makes the case for a new batch of public universities to explore new approaches: “Most industries are constantly enlivened by new entrants that design their processes and cultures in ways that reflect the latest available technology and wisdom and serve the needs of today’s customers. As the amount of time since most colleges and universities were created continues to lengthen, higher education will increasingly suffer from the lack of such competition and renewal in the traditional public and private non-profit sector.”
• Juliette Jowit reports on former climate skeptic Bjørn Lomborg’s new recommendation to spend $100 billion a year on climate: “Examining eight methods to reduce or stop global warming, Lomborg and his fellow economists recommend pouring money into researching and developing clean energy sources such as wind, wave, solar and nuclear power, and more work on climate engineering ideas such as “cloud whitening” to reflect the sun’s heat back into the outer atmosphere.”
• Mark Thoma calls for a fiscal policy that can avoid congressional gridlock –automatic stabilizers: “Automatic stabilizers are a tried and true means of stabilizing the economy. Increased reliance upon this type of stabilization could help solve the political problems that prevent Congress from responding effectively when the economy is most in need of help.”
• Steve Clemons explores the progress towards and makes the case for the U.S. providing more flood relief to Pakistan: “Now that we are spending monthly figures in Afghanistan that surpass $100 billion per year, it seems to me that a well-managed $1 billion investment in Pakistan would do much to improve the political environment in Afghanistan and Pakistan — large portions of the peoples of which respectively mistrust the U.S.”
• Jon Hilkevitch reports on a battle in the Illinois State Legislature over high-speed rail: “Bullet trains routinely operate at 150 to 220 mph. It’s the performance level Illinois should be shooting for, said state Sen. Martin Sandoval, D- Chicago, who is chairman of the Illinois Senate Transportation Committee.”

Here’s the bottom line: After reading just about ever single speech Obama has given on Iraq since 2002, he has been remarkably consistent for a politician.

He opposed the war, while being explicit that he’s comfortable with the use of force. He’s been steadfast that Bush was screwing around in Iraq while he should have been concentrating in Afghanistan.  Hence, this administration’s current policy is the continuation of Obama’s thinking since 2002.

However, once we were in Iraq, he recognized America’s ongoing national security concerns, and sought to promote debate on striking the balance between responsibility, national interest, and political reality.  Even though Obama opposed the surge, it was not because he was uncomfortable with using force, but because he felt that the threat of removing US troops would force political cooperation amongst Iraqi governing stakeholders.

Throughout his campaign, he stayed on message about bringing the war to a “responsible conclusion” a pledge that he has largely fulfilled.

The future is murky: Violence may return to haunt Iraq as the remaining troops are pulled out over the next 17 months (as George Bush’s 2008 SOFA dictates).   While a new Iraq government may request that continued presence of American forces past the 2011 deadline, it is dubious whether Obama, in the midst of a re-election bid, would reopen such a divisive arguement, particularly as America’s national security interests seem long-since secured.

Here are the details:

October 2, 2002: On the eve of a Congressional resolution authorizing President George Bush to use force in Iraq, Illinois State Senator Barack Obama gives a speech at a Chicago Anti-War Rally. Here’s what he said:

Let me begin by saying that although this has been billed as an anti-war rally, I stand before you as someone who is not opposed to war in all circumstances. …

After September 11th… I supported this [Bush] Administration’s pledge to hunt down and root out those who would slaughter innocents in the name of intolerance. … I don’t oppose all wars. What I am opposed to is a dumb war.

October 12, 2004: In a debate for his Illinois Senate seat against Republican Alan Keyes, Obama said this of Iraq and Afghanistan:

Ambassador Keyes and I agree on one thing, and that is that the War on Terror has to be

vigorously fought. Where we part company is how to fight it, because I think Afghanistan in fact was not a preemptive war, it was a war launched directly against those who were responsible for 9-11. Iraq was a preemptive war based on faulty evidence. … Now, us having gone in there, I do think we now have a deep national security interest in making certain that Iraq is stable. If is it not stable, not only are we going to have a humanitarian crisis, I think we are also going to have a huge national security problem on our ands—because, ironically, it has become a hotbed of terrorists consequence, in part, of our incursion there.

November 22, 2005. A speech to the Chicago Council of Foreign Relations found Obama in a reflective mood:

What do we want to accomplish now that we are in Iraq, and what is possible to accomplish? What kind of actions can we take to ensure not only a safe and stable Iraq, but that will also preserve our capacity to rebuild Afghanistan, isolate and apprehend terrorist cells, preserve our long-term military readiness, and devote the resources needed to shore up our homeland security?

[G]iven the enormous stakes in Iraq, I believe that those of us who are involved in shaping our national security policies should do what we believe is right, not merely what is politically expedient….

But I believe that, having waged a war that has unleashed daily carnage and uncertainty in Iraq, we have to manage our exit in a responsible way – with the hope of leaving a stable foundation for the future, but at the very least taking care not to plunge the country into an even deeper and, perhaps, irreparable crisis.

January 9, 2006. Senator Obama podcast following a trip to Baghdad:

I think the general view was that we were in such a delicate situation right now and that there was so little institutional capacity on the part of the Iraqi government, that a full military withdrawal at this point would probably result in significant civil war and potentially hundreds of thousands of deaths.

January 25, 2006. Senator Obama podcast following post-trip meeting with George Bush:

I believe we need to bring our troops home as quickly as possible, but to do so in a way that does not precipitate all out civil war in Iraq.

On February 22, 2006, the Sumarra Mosque, one of the holiest sites in Shiite Islam, is bombed.  The repercussions set off a spiral of increasing violence that many call a civil war.

June 26, 2006. Senator Obama floor statement on Iraq following proposed Kerry Amendment, which called for redeployment of troops.

I would like nothing more than to support the Kerry Amendment; to bring our brave troops home on a date certain, and spare the American people more pain, suffering and sorrow.

But having visited Iraq, I’m also acutely aware that a precipitous withdrawal of our troops, driven by Congressional edict rather than the realities on the ground, will not undo the mistakes made by this Administration. It could compound them. …

I do not believe that setting a date certain for the total withdrawal of U.S. troops is the best approach to achieving, in a methodical and responsible way, the three basic goals that should drive our Iraq policy: that is, 1) stabilizing Iraq and giving the factions within Iraq the space they need to forge a political settlement; 2) containing and ultimately defeating the insurgency in Iraq; and 3) bringing our troops safely home.

…

I cannot support the Kerry Amendment. Instead, I am a cosponsor of the Levin amendment, which gives us the best opportunity to find this balance between our need to begin a phase-down and our need to help stabilize Iraq.

November 20, 2006. Senator Obama speaks to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs:

The President should announce to the Iraqi people that our policy will include a gradual and substantial reduction in U.S. forces. He should then work with our military commanders to map out the best plan for such a redeployment and determine precise levels and dates. … [I]t could be suspended if at any point U.S. commanders believe that a further reduction would put American troops in danger. …

Perhaps most importantly, some of these troops could be redeployed to Afghanistan, where our lack of focus and commitment of resources has led to an increasing deterioration of the security situation there. The President’s decision to go to war in Iraq has had disastrous consequences for Afghanistan — we have seen a fierce Taliban offensive, a spike in terrorist attacks, and a narcotrafficking problem spiral out of control.

In January 2007, George Bush announced ‘the Surge’, which Obama opposed. Here’s a video. Here’s what Obama said in a Senate floor statement:

The President’s decision to move forward with this escalation anyway, despite all evidence and military advice to the contrary, is the terrible consequence of the decision to give him the broad, open-ended authority to wage this war back in 2002…. I cannot in good conscience support this escalation.

Drawing down our troops in Iraq will put pressure on Iraqis to arrive at the political settlement that is needed and allow us to redeploy additional troops in Afghanistan… My plan would couple this phased redeployment with an enhanced effort to train Iraqi security forces.

As the political narrative tells us, “the surge worked.” However, if you dig a little deeper, you’ll find that three events really helped bring about a de-escalation in violence in Iraq in 2007.  Read this op-ed from my friend Michael Kleinman on what really happened.

October 2, 2007.  Early in the presidential campaign, Senator Obama pledges to bring home troops within 16 months of taking office:

I will begin to remove our troops from Iraq immediately. I will remove one or two brigades a month and get all of our combat troops out of Iraq within 16 months. The only troops I will keep in Iraq will perform the limited missions of protecting our diplomats and carrying out targeted strikes on Al Qaeda.

November 19, 2008. Just before leaving office, George Bush negotiates a new Status of Forces Agreement with the Iraqi government.  It calls for US troops to be out of Iraq’s cities and towns by mid-2009 and out of the country altogether by the end of 2011.  Read the entire SOFA here.  Obama’s campaign timeline is more-or-less in line with Bush’s.

January 21, 2009. Just after taking office, President Obama met with military leaders and asked them to draw up a 16-month withdrawal plan from Iraq.

February 27, 2009. Obama tells Congressional leaders that he’s planning to pull all combat troops out of Iraq by August 2010. That 19 month time-line is three longer than his campaign promise. He tells lawmakers that he intends to keep 35,000-50,000 non-combat forces in the country for training and force protection. Some Democratic Congressional members are upset at the remaining forces; Generals Petraeus and Odierno are supportive.

August 25, 2010: U.S. troop numbers in Iraq at 49,700.

photo credit: U.S. Army’s photostream