Decision Points

Framework Agreement (SFA) , pledged long-term diplomatic, economic, and security cooperation between our countries.
    Hammering out the agreements took months. Maliki had to deal with serious opposition from factions of his government, especially those withsuspected ties to Iran. In the middle of a presidential campaign, Democratic candidates denounced the SOFA as a scheme to keep our troops in Iraq forever. The CIA doubted that Maliki would sign the agreement. I asked the prime minister about it directly. He assured me he wanted the SOFA. He had kept his word in the past, and I believed he would again.
    Maliki proved a tough negotiator. He would obtain a concession from our side **** and then come back asking for more. On one level, the endless horse trading was frustrating. But on another level, I was inspired to see the Iraqis conducting themselves like representatives of a sovereign democracy.
    As time passed without agreement, I started to get anxious. In one of our weekly videoconferences, I said, “Mr. Prime Minister, I only have a few months left in office. I need to know whether you want these agreements. If not, I have better things to do.” I could tell he was a little taken aback. This was my signal that it was time to stop asking for more. “We will finish these agreements,” he said. “You have my word.”
    By November, the agreements were almost done. The final contentious issue was what the SOFA would say about America’s withdrawal from Iraq. Maliki told us it would help him if the agreement included a promise to pull out our troops by a certain date. Our negotiators settled on a commitment to withdraw our forces by the end of 2011.
    For years, I had refused to set an arbitrary timetable for leaving Iraq. I was still hesitant to commit to a date, but this was not arbitrary. The agreement had been negotiated between two sovereign governments, and it had the blessing of Generals Petraeus and Odierno, who would oversee its implementation. If conditions changed and Iraqis requested a continued American presence, we could amend the SOFA and keep troops in the country.
    Maliki’s political instincts proved wise. The SOFA and SFA, initially seen as documents focused on our staying in Iraq, ended up being viewed as agreements paving the way for our departure. The blowback we initially feared from Capitol Hill and the Iraqi parliament never materialized. As I write in 2010, the SOFA continues to guide our presence in Iraq.

    On December 13, 2008, I boarded Air Force One for my fourth trip to Iraq, where I would sign the SOFA and SFA with Prime Minister Maliki. On the flight over, I thought about my previous trips to the country. They traced the arc of the war. There was the joy of the first visit on Thanksgiving Day 2003, which came months after liberation and a few weeks before the capture of Saddam. There was the uncertainty of the trip to meet Maliki in June 2006, when sectarian violence was rising and our strategy was failing. There was the cautious optimism of Anbar in September 2007, when the surge appeared to be working but still faced serious opposition. Now there was this final journey. Even though much of America seemed to have tuned out the war, our troops and the Iraqis had created the prospect of lasting success.
    We landed in Baghdad and choppered to Salam Palace, which six years earlier had belonged to Saddam and his brutal regime. As president, I had attended many arrival ceremonies. None was more moving than standing in the courtyard of that liberated palace, next to President Jalal Talabani , watching the flags of the United States and a free Iraq fly side by side as a military band played our national anthems.
    From there we drove to the prime minister’s complex, where Maliki and I signed the SOFA and the SFA and held a final press conference. The room was packed tight, and the audience was closer than at a normal event. A handful of Iraqi journalists sat in front of me on the left. To my right was the traveling press pool and a few reporters based in Iraq. As Maliki called for the first question, a man in the Iraqi press rose abruptly. He let out what sounded like a loud bark, something in Arabic that sure wasn’t a question. Then he wound up and threw something in my direction. What was it? A shoe?
    The scene went into slow motion. I felt like Ted Williams, who said he could see the stitching of a baseball on an incoming pitch. The wingtip was helicoptering toward me. I ducked.