The United States has withdrawn the last of its troops from Iraq. After more than 2 decades, the Iraqi government cannot lean on US security. It is pretty clear they are not up to the job and that the Iranians will be operating from their next-door neighbor’s land. The Pentagon is saying they have achieved a great objective and that is has all been worthwhile. The Iraqi government says that this is represents a return to sovereignty and that it will have the independent militias under control some time next year. What no one is saying, except here, is that the entire 23 years of American involvement in Iraq has been a foreign policy cataclysm. It made America weaker and less respected. Despite Mr. Trump’s attack on Iran, the Bush invasion of Iraq remains the biggest foreign policy blunder in US history.
The US war in Iraq fell into two different periods: the Saddamite War and the ISIS War. The New York Times explained
After toppling Saddam Hussein in 2003, the brutal dictator who ruled Iraq for nearly 24 years, American forces are making their second withdrawal from the country.
The U.S. invasion and subsequent occupation, which ended in 2011, left a country reeling from sectarian bloodletting and militant insurgencies that cost nearly 4,500 U.S. lives and killed more than 115,000 Iraqis, according to the most modest counts.
American forces ultimately returned three years later — this time to lead the international coalition fighting the Islamic State, the jihadist force that once seized swaths of Iraq and Syria and became notorious for its slaughter of Shiite Muslim Iraqis, public killings of hostages, and torture and enslavement of women from Iraq’s Yazidi minority.
This journal has nothing good to say about Saddam Hussein nor about the Islamic State. The failure of the US occupation that followed the Saddamite War to produce an Iraqi government capable to defending the country led directly to the success ISIS had. The Iraqi Army fled the field as ISIS advanced. As President Bush said, “When Iraqis stand up, America will stand down.” The Iraqi government never got out of its chair.
Yet yesterday, Prime Minister al-Zaidi of Iraq said, “The conclusion of the international coalition’s mission does not mean the end of our battle against terrorism. It marks Iraq’s transition to a phase in which it assumes full responsibility for its security and stability.”
“The coalition successfully completed its organized withdrawal operation from Erbil [the last US base],” Rear Admiral Liam M. Hulin, head of the joint task force for Operation Inherent Resolve, announced during a ceremony held by U.S. and Iraqi officials in Baghdad. “I stand before you at this historic moment, when a nation reclaims its destiny,” Admiral Hulin said in Arabic.
Iran is next door, and it funds the militias that Mr. al Zaidi wants to bring under control. One cannot see how the fledgling government in Baghdad is going to do anything that Tehran does not like. Meanwhile, Israel has set up bases in Iraq without Baghdad’s permission, and Turkiye occupies part of northwestern Iraq. In a way, Iraq offers the various nations a battlefield where they can fight it out. The certain losers in this are the Iraqi people.
Admiral Hulin is undoubtedly a noble fellow and an experienced officer. His heart is pure and his thoughts are on benefitting others. Yet he is wrong. The Iraqi people are not reclaiming anything. The Iranians have finally won control of their neighbor.