In a scathing statement released as al-Maliki and Obama held a press conference in Washington, McCain said the two men have “failed in their responsibilities with regard to our shared security interests.”
“The sacrifices of both our peoples in a long and costly war, the continued needs of Iraq’s Security Forces, and the enduring U.S. interest in a stable and democratic Iraq all demanded a continued presence of U.S. troops beyond this year,” McCain said. “But domestic political considerations in each country have been allowed to trump our common security interests.”
“It did not have to be this way, and the fact that it is has everything to do with a failure of vision, commitment, and leadership both in Washington and Baghdad," he said.
Obama and Vice President Biden held a bilateral meeting with Maliki in the Oval office Monday to discuss the removal of U.S. troops.
McCain, the ranking member on the Senate Armed Services Committee, has been sharply critical of President Obama’s decision to withdraw all U.S. troops from Iraq by the end of the year. The end of U.S. involvement was negotiated between Iraq and the Bush administration in 2008 and was affirmed by Obama this fall.
Obama and Maliki will later lay wreaths at nearby Arlington National Cemetery, where some of the nearly 4,500 U.S. service members killed in Iraq since the war began in 2003 are buried.
On Wednesday, the Iraqi prime minister is expected to accompany Obama to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, where the U.S. president to will thank troops returning home from Iraq.
In Brussels Monday, NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said the alliance will permanently shut down its seven-year training mission in Iraq and withdraw all of its soldiers at the end of the month.
The decision follows Obama's announcement in October that U.S. troops would return home at year's end after talks to keep thousands of trainers in Iraq fell apart over Baghdad's insistence that all NATO personnel in the country be subject to Iraqi laws and jurisprudence.
U.S. officials had asked for about 3,000 U.S. troops to stay in Iraq, but the Iraqi government was not able to push any agreement on immunity through parliament. The failure to agree on an immunity deal also led to the NATO pullout.
These developments have heightened concern about a power vacuum in the country that could be exploited by neighboring Iran.
Both countries have Shi'ite majorities and many Iraqi politicians spent time in exile in Iran during then-dictator Saddam Hussein's regime. One of Maliki's main allies - anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr - is believed to have spent most of his time in Iran.
Several thousand U.S. troops remain in Iraq, more than eight years after invading the country to oust Saddam Hussein.
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