Obama ends war in Iraq -The iPINIONS Journal

It might seem impossible for a president to be triumphant, modest, contradictory, solemn and opportunistic all at once. Yet President Obama was just that when he made the following announcement on Friday:

After nearly 9 years, America’s war in Iraq will be over…

Over the next two months, our troops in Iraq—tens of thousands of them—will pack up their gear and board convoys for the journey home. The last American soldiers will cross the border out of Iraq—with their heads held high, proud of their success, and knowing that the American people stand united in our support for our troops. That is how America’s military efforts in Iraq will end…

Today I can say that troops in Iraq will be home for the holidays….

(White House.gov, October 21, 2011)

He was duly triumphant because ending the war in Iraq was the raison d’être for his presidential campaign in 2008.

He was modest because the terminally combustible state of affairs in Iraq prevented him from declaring victory. The stated mission, remember, was to build an Iraq that “can govern, sustain and defend itself”. But nothing conveyed what a faustian quest this was turning out to be quite like Gen. David Petraeus reporting five years into this war that all of the progress being made in Iraq is “fragile [and] reversible”.

He was contradictory because Obama did not want to end America’s military efforts in Iraq this year. In fact, the only reason the troops will be home for the holidays is that he failed to negotiate a new status of forces agreement with an increasingly hostile Iraqi government to keep thousands of troops in the country on U.S. terms to continue training Iraqi soldiers and counter growing Iranian influence. That the Iraqis refused to extend the immunity U.S. troops enjoyed (i.e., wanted the right now to arrest and imprison any of them) was the deal breaker, and rightly so.

He was solemn because he understands all too well that America has little to show for the 4,500 plus soldiers killed, the 32,000 wounded, and the $700 billion spent on this war.

And he was opportunistic because he knew full well that he was merely reflecting prevailing public opinion about the war in Iraq. For a Pew Center opinion survey, which the Associated Press published on October 5, 2011, found that the vast majority of ordinary Americans, and even one-third of war veterans, think that neither the Iraq nor Afghan war was worth it.

All the same I welcome his announcement. Not least because I am on record calling for America to end its military misadventure in Iraq years before Obama made it the clarion call for his presidential campaign. Here is an excerpt from one of my many commentaries on point in which I address the patent fallacy of using U.S. troops as peacekeepers, on the one hand, to prevent Iraqis from killing each other, and on the other, to keep Iranian influence at bay:

When the truth is plain to see, there’s nothing more irritating than some idiot trying to convince me otherwise. But the consequences for me in such cases have never been anything to lose sleep – let alone my life – over. Alas, the same cannot be said for the families of loved ones serving in Iraq. Because they must suffer far more than irritation when idiots – up and down the chain of command in the Bush Administration – try to convince them that reports of Iraq being a lost cause are not true…

Yesterday marked the 3rd Anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. And, if I were gullible enough to take President Bush and his salute-and-obey generals at their word, I would have expected to see Yankee Doodle-inspired parades in the streets of Baghdad – as grateful Iraqis fête U.S. military and civilian personnel with “rose petals and air kisses” for their liberation. The truth, of course, is that neither U.S. personnel nor most Iraqis dare walk the streets of Baghdad for fear of being caught in the crossfire of civil-war factions battling for control of this and other cities all over Iraq.

But, imagine the absurdity, indeed the tragedy, of Ayad Allawi, the man the U.S. Congress hailed as the Abraham Lincoln of Iraq just 16 months ago, now proclaiming that stabilizing Iraqi is a lost cause yet having Oval-office generals like Bush and VP Cheney trying to convince him and the world otherwise….

(Civil war in Iraq is at hand, The iPINIONS Journal, March 20, 2006)

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Meanwhile, you’ve probably heard the predictable carping by Republicans about Obama grasping defeat from the hands of victory with this announcement. But it is plain for all to see that even if U.S. troops were to remain for another 100 years, they still would not be able to turn Iraq into a Jeffersonian democracy.

The problem of course is that these delusional Republicans (led by Senator John McCain who is clearly still smarting over losing the presidency to Obama in 2008) are quite prepared to keep them there that long – even if that means ten times as many troops being killed and wounded, and ten times as many billions being wasted.

Apropos of this, these Republicans are making allusions to the peacekeeping and nation-building efforts U.S. troops have been carrying out in Europe and on the Korean peninsula. But their allusions are fatally undermined by the fact that these troops were never deployed as such sitting ducks for local insurgents that over four thousand of them were killed and over thirty thousand wounded, which was the fate of U.S. troop deployment in Iraq. And they conveniently overlook the fact that Obama will be “repositioning” many of the troops leaving Iraq right next door in the more European-like setting of Kuwait, from where they can blitz back into Iraq whenever necessary.

Moreover, there’s every indication that Iraqi insurgents are just lying in wait to continue their attacks. But even now the number of U.S. troops killed doing peacekeeping and nation-building tours in Europe and on the Korean peninsula over the past 59 years (collectively) is less than one percent of the number of troops that have been killed and wounded in Iraq over the past 9….

Likewise, their assertion that the presence of U.S. troops would deter Iranian influence is belied by the fact that U.S. generals were complaining about Iranian influence in Iraq from day one. They even presented clear and convincing evidence that Iran was not just arming but also providing logistical support to the Iraqi insurgents who were killing U.S. troops and undermining their missionary efforts at nation building.

Yet the only thing former President George W. Bush did to combat this influence was to issue demonstrably hollow threats. More to the point, when McCain and the new crop of Republicans vying to succeed him as their party’s presidential nominee next year try to explain what they would do to “make Iran respect the U.S.”, they all sound like presidential wannabe Rick Perry trying to explain Einstein’s theory of relativity.

So here’s to Obama for finally bringing this military misadventure to an end in as dignified a manner as possible.

Finally, since I’ve been even more adamant about withdrawing from Afghanistan, I hope he reconsiders his recent decision not to end that plainly unwinnable war now as well. Because nothing demonstrates what a complete waste of life and treasure military efforts there are quite like Afghan President Hamid Karzai making the following declaration over the weekend:

If fighting starts between Pakistan and the U.S., we are beside Pakistan. If Pakistan is attacked and the people of Pakistan need Afghanistan’s help, Afghanistan will be there with you.

(Associated Press, October 23, 2011)

Clearly this declaration is as ungrateful as it is antagonistic – especially when you consider that no less a person than chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen testified recently that Pakistan was not just arming but also providing logistical support to the Taliban who are killing U.S. troops and undermining their missionary efforts at nation building.

In other words, this is rather like Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki declaring that if the U.S. retaliates against Iran, Iraqis would side with the Iranians.

In any case, the toppling of Gaddafi in Libya demonstrates that America does not need to invade with tens of thousands of ground troops to keep any country in check. In fact, I argued as much years before Obama got bin Laden:

Obama would be well-advised to cut America’s losses and retreat ASAP; to let the Afghans govern themselves however they like; and to rely on Special Forces and aerial drones to get the Taliban and al Qaeda.

(With [or even without] more troops, failure in Afghanistan is likely, The iPINIONS Journal, 2009)

So it behooves these backstabbing Afghans, those two-faced Pakistanis, and them meddlesome Iranians to take heed.

With that I rest my case in re Iraq and Afghanistan!

NOTE: I alluded above to the missionary zeal among Republicans to democratize the Middle East. But you’d think they would have been chastened in this respect by democratic elections in the Gaza Strip which resulted in the election of Islamic fundamentalists who not only are committed to the destruction of Israel, but utterly reject the Western values these misguided Republicans hope to transpose throughout the region as well.