Iraq was a ill conceived war. It broke US' back. It is to US' benefit that Obama decided to pull out. And we can be sure that the pull out will be complete by end 2011 since he will still be in the WH at that time.
We need to give some more time to see why the Republicans have always been against announcing a withdrawal date. This far, we don't see any flurry of violent activities being triggered due to the announcement of a pull out date.
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Mission unfulfilled
Published: August 22 2010 20:06 | Last updated: August 22 2010 20:06
Seven years after his predecessor declared an end to major combat operations, Barack Obama, US president, withdrew the last American combat unit from Iraq last week. US forces leave behind a broken country. The original sins of the Iraq war – wishful thinking dressed up as intelligence and botched post-invasion planning – were visited on the innocent. Iraqis suffered a paroxysm of sectarian violence that the world’s supposed superpower was too blind to foresee and too weak to forestall.
The 2007 troop surge was a factor in improving security, which remains threadbare. But the main significance of the surge was symbolic. So it is with the current withdrawal. US combat forces had already pulled out of urban areas, where most of the fighting has taken place, and 50,000 US soldiers will remain in Iraq. The symbolism does more for US than Iraqi morale. Throughout its ranks, the new Iraqi army worries loudly about its ability to stop violence from rising without US help.
The reality is that the political space the surge was meant to open up created a vacuum that remains unfilled. Iraq’s elections are the Arab world’s freest, but nearly six months on from the last polls politicians have still not managed to form a new government. And not only the state, but Iraqi society is broken. One in six Iraqis, disproportionately middle-class professionals, have fled their homes, around half for other countries.
This is the result of two neoconservative conceits: that shock and awe made an extended presence of large troop numbers superfluous; and that liberal-democratic states spontaneously spring up where old institutions are razed even if new ones are not built.
Beyond human suffering, the collateral damage includes America’s stature. Humiliated in Iraq, the US is less feared by enemies and less loved by friends. Another casualty was the case for liberal interventionism. Though the US rid Iraq of Saddam’s tyranny, the incompetence with which it did so makes it harder to defend future military action even when the cause is just.
In a better world, the US would stay to fix what it broke. As it has proved itself incapable of that, a slow withdrawal is the least bad option. A brighter Iraqi future now depends on two unlikely things. A regional modus vivendi must be found that lets Iraq prosper and does not turn it into Tehran and Riyadh’s battling ground; and Iraqi leaders must stop the politics of spoil-splitting, and work to make the country attractive to the professional class – Iraq’s true wealth.
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