It has been a short 100 years. That's how long Republican presidential candidate John McCain had said United States troops might have to stay in Iraq, but the deal Washington concluded with the Iraqi Government last week said all must be gone by 2011.
They must be off the streets of Iraqi cities by mid next year.
That's not soon enough for a lot of Iraqis. Fifty thousand supporters of Moqtada al-Sadr, the Shia leader who embodies the resentment of the poor against the Shia establishment, came out onto Baghdad streets last Saturday to protest against the deal signed by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.
They want the US to leave now, which is Sadr's position. It may win him a commanding position in Parliament when Iraq votes next year.
Maliki stood up for Iraqi sovereignty partly because he would pay for it in next year's election if he did not, but he was never just an American puppet.
He opposed the invasion in 2003, and also the decision of his own party, al-Dawa, to join the first Iraqi "governing council" set up by occupation pro-consul Paul Bremer.
So negotiations for a "status of forces agreement" to provide legal cover for the US military presence in Iraq after the UN mandate expires in December were not just window-dressing.
The Bush administration had to abandon its quest for permanent military bases in Iraq, although there is a clause in the deal that allows for a change of mind in Baghdad.
As Iraqi Government spokesman Ali Dabbagh put it, "in 2011 the government at that time will determine whether it needs a new pact, and what type of pact will depend on the challenges it faces". But the shoe is on the other foot now, with the US right to keep troops in Iraq lapsing automatically at the end of 2011 unless the Iraqi Government wishes otherwise.
Iraq was less successful making US troops responsible to Iraqi courts. The deal has a clause saying Iraqi law will apply "if they commit a serious and deliberate felony outside their bases and when off duty," but no US soldiers leave bases when off duty. However, foreign civilian contractors will be subject to Iraqi law in future.
It's not all that bad a deal, given the extent Maliki's government depends on US troops for survival. But even within the alliance of Shia parties it faces severe criticism, and may not pass Parliament.
In the real world, it feels like a fantasy. It is an undisputed factoid in US political debate that Iraq has been stabilised by last year's "surge" of troops, but the reality is different.
There is less sectarian killing, but that is mainly because ethnic cleansing of mixed neighbourhoods of Sunni and Shia Arabs is almost complete.
Other major outbreaks of violence remain possible.
The "Awakening" movement, in which tens of thousands of Sunni Arabs who had been fighting the American occupation went on the US payroll to fight the take-over of their community by al-Qaeda extremists, is at a crossroads.
Starting this month, Awakening fighters are paid by the Iraqi Government, not the US, and only 20 per cent will be absorbed into the Iraqi Army.
The others will only be paid until they find jobs - but there are almost no well-paying jobs apart from government work. So what do the rest do? Go back to fighting the Americans?
And possibility of war between Arab Iraq and Kurdish Iraq is ever present. The relative calm at the moment may just be the eye of the hurricane.
Gwynne Dyer's Climate Wars has just been published by Scribe.