Former Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer on Iraq withdrawal: ‘It’s time’

Instant reactions are starting to come in to President Barack Obama's announcement that he is withdrawing American military forces from Iraq by the end of the year.

Ari Fleischer, who as President George W. Bush's press secretary played a key role in making the public case for the 2003 invasion, said he backed the move.

"O decision on Iraq is right one," Fleischer tweeted. "I was open 2 staying if he made the case it wld help w Iran, but Iraq war is over. It's time."

Fleischer suggested that his former boss deserved some of the credit. In a separate tweet, he wrote: "12/31/11 withdrawal date was set by Pres Bush in famous shoe-throwing news conf in Baghdad. That's where 12/31/11 came from."

John Kerry, the Democratic senator from Massachusetts who is the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, hailed the move. "The United States is fulfilling our agreement with an Iraqi government that wants to shape its own future," Kerry said in a statement. "The President is also following through on his commitment to end both the conflict in Iraq and our military presence."

Some of the the war's most ardent backers, however, took a different view. "The Obama administration's willingness to jettison hard fought gains in Iraq, and abandon opportunities to project power toward Iran and the Gulf can only be viewed as another step toward relinquishing U.S. global leadership," Danielle Pletka and Stewart Gottlieb, both former Republican Senate staffers, wrote in a Fox News op-ed article Thursday, based on indications that the withdrawal would be announced. "And that, it appears, is Barack Obama's goal."

And Frederick W. Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute, a key architect of President Bush's "surge" strategy, wrote that President Obama "has decided to abandon America's interest in Iraq and damage our position in the Middle East."

Meanwhile, Spencer Ackerman of Wired argues that despite what President Obama says, the war won't really be over. "[T]he fact is America's military efforts in Iraq aren't coming to an end. They are instead entering a new phase. On January 1, 2012, the State Department will command a hired army of about 5,500 security contractors, all to protect the largest U.S. diplomatic presence anywhere overseas," Ackerman writes. "You can also expect that there will be a shadow presence by the CIA, and possibly the Joint Special Operations Command, to hunt persons affiliated with al-Qaida."

UPDATE, 10/21, 3pm: Mitt Romney, the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination, slammed the move.

"President Obama's astonishing failure to secure an orderly transition in Iraq has unnecessarily put at risk the victories that were won through the blood and sacrifice of thousands of American men and women," Romney said in a statement. "The unavoidable question is whether this decision is the result of a naked political calculation or simply sheer ineptitude in negotiations with the Iraqi government. The American people deserve to hear the recommendations that were made by our military commanders in Iraq."

Lindsey Graham, Republican senator from South Carolina, also voiced displeasure. "I respectfully disagree with President Obama," Graham said in his own statement. "I feel all we have worked for, fought for, and sacrificed for is very much in jeopardy by today's announcement. I hope I am wrong and the president is right, but I fear this decision has set in motion events that will come back to haunt our country."

Harry Reid, the Senate Majority Leader and a Democrat from Nevada, called the move, "the right decision at the right time."

And Sen. Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee, raised one possible reason for the move that hasn't received much attention. "I was prepared to support a continued presence of U.S. trainers in Iraq beyond the end of this year," Levin said in a statement. "But in light of Iraq's refusal to eliminate the possibility that U.S. troops would face prosecutions in Iraqi courts, President Obama has made the right decision."

UPDATE, 10/21 4:10 pm: Rep. Michele Bachman of Minnesota, also a presidential candidate: "Today's announcement that we will remove all of our forces from Iraq is a political decision and not a military one; it represents the complete failure of President Obama to secure an agreement with Iraq for our troops to remain there to preserve the peace and demonstrates how far our foreign policy leadership has fallen."

And Salon's Glenn Greenwald picks up the point raised by Sen. Levin. Though Greenwald, a staunch opponent of the war, writes that the withdrawal is "obviously a good thing," he adds: "The Obama administration — as it's telling you itself — was willing to keep troops in Iraq after the 2011 deadline (indeed, they weren't just willing, but eager). The only reason they aren't is because the Iraqi Government refused to agree that U.S. soldiers would be immunized if they commit serious crimes, such as gunning down Iraqis without cause."