Fortress America

President Barack Obama claimed that America will not be retaining any permanent bases in Iraq. This was meant to be a sign to Iraqis and the broader Arab world that the United States does not have an imperialist ambition when it comes to Iraq. If so, that message was canceled today with the opening of the U.S. government it calls a "fortress": U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.

The United States is clearly not intending to have normal relationship with the new Iraqi state, a state that encompasses one of the largest proven oil reserves. The embassy is the largest U.S. embassy in the world, 10x larger than the UN complex in New York. 2/3 as big as the Washington National Mall. It costs $700 million, sits on 104 acres [the average U.S. embassy is 10 acres], and costs $1 billion yearly to manage. It will house 1,000 employees in several buildings some of home actually resemble a fortress.

An embassy of this size can only mean that the United States intends to act more like a colonial protectorate rather than a nation maintaining normal bi-lateral relations. Under international law, a nation, of course, has the right to dictate the size of a mission a country is entitled to. It even can dictate building structures and placement. To say nothing of the 1,000 staffers, the Iraqi government should mandate that the U.S. government downsize in land usage in the next few years. No nation has ever taken a bigger chunk from a capital city as the United States has here. This is the land space employed for the U.S. embassy:

green zone 4L15x 19672

It is uncalled for that the United States would retain such a large footprint in Iraq and it undermines the Iraqi government's legitimacy in the eyes of its own people and the whole Arab world for it creates the impression that the United States will interfere [as it does in other Arab governments] in Iraq's domestic politics.

A relationship based on "mutual interest and mutual respect," to quote Obama, does not need a staff of 1,000 in Baghdad.