Breakthrough In Baghdad

The feared boycott by critical Shiites didn't happen and the cabinet has approved the SOFA by a massive majority. Now: the parliament. Then: the withdrawal. The great news for Obama is that the Iraqis themselves have insisted that his fixed timetable be set in stone:

The draft approved Sunday requires coalition forces to withdraw from Iraqi cities and towns by the summer of 2009 and from the country by the end of 2011. An earlier version had language giving some flexibility to that deadline, with both sides discussing timetables and timelines for withdrawal, but the Iraqis managed to have the deadline set in stone, a significant negotiating victory. The United States has around 150,000 troops in Iraq.

This is important because it removes from the hard right the possibility of playing the Dolchstoss card. The usual suspects - Reynolds, Hanson, Krauthammer, Kagan - will be unable to say that the chaos and mass murder that will almost certainly follow in 2010 and 2011 is Obama's responsibility. It isn't.

They will try to argue that Obama's choice to withdraw has led to a victory for al Qaeda and that the Democrats have stabbed American troops in the back. (You can almost write Palin's primary campaign message three years ahead of time.) But now that the Iraqis themselves have insisted on total US withdrawal by 2011 regardless, the neocons will not be able to play that card - or at leat play it with any credibility.

The looming civil war in Iraq will then be the Iraqis' responsibility and Bush's ultimate legacy in Iraq. Obama can avoid some of the blowback. And the genius of appointing Clinton as secretary-of-state is that she will have to absorb the blows of failure. Think of a possible Obama State Department offer to Clinton this way:

"You voted for this bloody war. Now you can end it."

And he will focus on the economy. Genius.