Peter Baker on Afghanistan v. Iraq Executive Agreements

Peter Baker has a post on the NYT’s page that marks the similarities between the just-announced sole executive agreement negotiated with Afghanistan with the one the Bush administration negotiated in Iraq in 2008.  I have not compared the two documents closely, but both concern long-term security and related arrangements in the two countries; both were made on the president’s constitutional authority without formal consent by Congress or the Senate; both are binding under international law.  As Baker notes, Senators Biden, Clinton, and Obama opposed the Bush agreement – at least a rumored earlier version – on constitutional grounds.  Baker further notes:

Whatever his early complaints, Mr. Obama clearly came to respect the main negotiators of Mr. Bush’s Iraq agreement, Ryan C. Crocker and Brett McGurk.  Mr. Obama appointed Mr. Crocker ambassador to Afghanistan, where he helped broker Tuesday’s agreement, modeled in part after the Iraq agreement, while the president just nominated Mr. McGurk to be the next ambassador to Iraq.  And the man who responded to Democrats’ complaints four years ago was Douglas E. Lute, Mr. Bush’s Iraq adviser. Today, Mr. Lute is Mr. Obama’s Afghanistan adviser.