President Obama's Iraq troop withdrawal should finally silence the naysayers. And there have been many of them. GOP leaders pound him relentlessly for being weak, ineffectual, and indecisive on military and foreign policy aims and goals. His handling of the Iraq war supposedly was the ultimate proof of that. Liberal Democrats and progressives screamed at him for allegedly betraying his much stated pledge as a U.S. Senator and a presidential candidate to end the war, and end it quickly once in the White House. The critics did not take one glaring fact into consideration. Wars are always easy to start, but never easy to end, especially when they are inherited from another administration, an administration of the opposing party. That was the case first with Korea. President Eisenhower made the dramatic campaign pledge in 1952 to end the Korean War stalemate. He inherited the war from Democrat Harry Truman. It took more than a year after he took office, and thousands more U.S. casualties, prolonged and complex negotiations, and a determined opposition from military generals and war hawks to pulverize Korea and even China with nuclear weapons to get a final war settlement.
President Nixon had the same difficulty in ending the Vietnam War, a war he inherited from Democrat Lyndon Johnson. It took nearly six years after Nixon said he had a secret plan to end the war, and won the White House in 1968. It took six years of hard fighting, thousands more U.S. casualties and the final crushing collapse of South Vietnam's U.S. backed puppet government before the U.S. finally cashed in its chips.
President Obama faced the same dilemma as his predecessors who made promises to end their unpopular wars but given the vagaries of war, political and military opposition, and massive vested interests in perpetuating war. Extricating the country from Iraq was no simple matter. The eight year ground war with U.S. troops taking casualties, inflicting death and destruction on towns and villages, and heavy collateral damage, i.e. civilian deaths, stirred international, and regional hatred of the U.S., and reaffirmed the U.S. image as the bully boy of the world. The war was a colossal domestic and international disaster, and the mountainous lies and deception that the Bush administration used to get and keep the U.S. in Iraq will be a permanent mark of historical disgrace and shame on the Bush legacy.
The more important thing for Obama and the nation is the political consequence of the withdrawal. The Iraq war was never simply a military contest to get rid of a hated dictator, in a country that supposedly posed a massive threat to Israel and moderate Arab governments. It was a political war waged to assert American political dominance, control strategic oil resources, to bolster the military hawk credentials of the Bush administration and to boost Bush's tenuous and sagging personal image and popularity on the home front. Obama understood that as long as the bullets, American bullets, flew at Iraqi targets, the U.S. would continue to suffer the deeply flawed and failed political consequences of its overt military involvement in the country.
Obama also learned another lesson, a negative one, from Bush's Iraq folly. In announcing that the troops would be home by Christmas, he did not declare "mission accomplished" with the withdrawal. The mission accomplished boast would be tantamount to declaring the war a U.S. victory. To tout a war that should never have been fought and then fought for the wrong reasons, and in the wrong way, would be laughable and insulting, especially considering that there is no guarantee that the country will be the oasis of peace, democracy, and stability that supposedly was the goal of waging the war in the first place.
The Iraq war was an ugly and shameful page in U.S. history. Obama early on recognized that, and recognized that millions of Americans were furious and frustrated by it, and the first chance he got to fulfill his pledge to end the war would be a solid plus for his administration and the country. GOP leaders and presidential candidates will wag ineffectual fingers at him for supposedly weakening U.S. resolve in the region, and some on the other side will rail at him for not getting out of Iraq the first day he entered the White House. But all that really counts is he did what he said and finally ended the conflict. The naysayers can't take that away from him.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He is a weekly co-host of the Al Sharpton Show on American Urban Radio Network. He is the author of How Obama Governed: The Year of Crisis and Challenge. He is an associate editor of New America Media. He is host of the weekly Hutchinson Report Newsmaker Hour on KTYM Radio Los Angeles streamed on ktym.com podcast on blogtalkradio.com and on thehutchinsonreportnews.com
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Withdrawal from IRAQ is way overdue and we all should be thankful. The coalition of the willing left YEARS before.
The U.S.–Iraq Status of Forces Agreement (official name: "Agreement Between the United States of America and the Republic of Iraq On the Withdrawal of United States Forces from Iraq and the Organization of Their Activities during Their Temporary Presence in Iraq") is a status of forces agreement (SOFA) between Iraq and the United States. It establishes that U.S. combat forces will withdraw from Iraqi cities by June 30, 2009, and all U.S. forces will be completely out of Iraq by December 31, 2011 was signed by G. W. Bush on December 14, 2008 at a press conference with the Iraqi President.
Don't you remember the "shoe throwing incident"?
There is far more to account for than the Iraq war; the war in Afghanistan is most glaring, as is the war on drugs Obama has embraced as his own, targeting states & medicinal users, enhanced domestic spying, & the total absence of holding any perpetrator of the current “economic downturn†to account, promises & rhetoric embraced by candidate Obama have been thrown in the garbage by Prez Obama. The utter failure to hold any banker or wall st thief to account for the new American Depression, & his support for the “deal†to allow those responsible to escape with most of their stolen money is NOT acceptable!
This isn't about black & white, it is about rich & poor, and who you stand with, which side you are on, & Barack Obama has stood with the status quo & those committed to greed above all else too many times. Your attempt at deflection will not fly, but rather, makes the point that this prez has betrayed those who believed in him for political advantage, too many times. I would he fire those he hired out of political calculation & gave voice (& action) to his promises as candidate he has so effectively ignored & abandoned. Too little, too late,
but not until. taking the troops pit means nothing when you leave the mercs there at taxpayer expense.
actually it means less than nothing. it is a terrible development. no accountability for the spoox at all.
Baloney. timetable was set before he became president. and it doesnt mean a thing until the us stops paying for private military contractors/private army in iraq. replacing taxpayer-funded, geneva-convention-bound, accountable usa troops with mercenaries and defense fatcats at usa taxpayers continuing expense doesnt silence a signle nay this side of heaven. the article was a bunch of baloney.
There will always be naysayers and in this rare instance I may be one of them. I believe it has been reported that the only reason the forces are leaving is because the Iraqis, rightly rejected requests for legal immunity. Had they accepted these terms there is every reason to assume that the withdrawal would not be occurring at this time. Therefor, there is no withdrawal achievement to celebrate. Celebrating the withdrawal is making a virtue of a necessity.
All we did was to open a "Pandora's Box" which resulted in internal strife between the Shites and Sunnis, and the Shite Cleric Muqtada Al-Sadr's militia wreaking havoc throughout the countryside. More importantly, Iran has exacted its influence over their fellow Shite brothers and have supported them financially and with military assistance, advisors and money.
Iran's influence will be the basis for our returning troops to that country. Anyone thinking we are permanently leaving that country are turning a blind eye to what they know to be false. This is an ugly chapter in our history!!!
................but it won't! On Obama's watch Osama Bin Laden was killed but did that make ANY difference whatsoever? NO! This is a man who is damned if he does or doesn't by the HATRED that continues to plague this country!
Chapter II is coming, give it a year or two.
Both political parties call this a "victory".
What a dark dark day for my nation.
No, it never should have started. But no, it's not going to be over for a long long time.
Worth a listen if we only would:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAI-STOGki0
The Iraq war won't be over for a LONG time.
We were asked by this country to leave last year. We have no business there to begin with. Dark days seem to be what the GOP values.
Iraq is what it is as a result of having to be prepared to contend with a regime that had the support of the US because of the fear of Russia. Poppy Bush was even more convinced of this after having observed the fighting Russians in Afghanistan(where he discovered Bin Laden "In Existence". All Americans should rue that day).Russian ruthlessness was based on their equivalent oil needs vs Bush's own. This was again made evident just a few years ago when Putin blasted the break-away regions of the former USSR on a Sunday morning bombing Tbilisi and then went on to meet up personally with "W" at the Olympics in Beijing where he "pressed" him(these photos were removed from circulation),
The bombing of Baghdad had begun with Shock and Awe taking out the Russian oil lines and port as well as those of our "allies"the French. What does this tell you?
Did candidate Obama not know that? And do liberals not know that we're withdrawing from Iraq in accordance with the SOFA agreement negotiated by Bush, specifiying that all troops be out of there by December 31, 2011? Obama is fighting to keep troops IN, in the event liberals didn't know that either.
Uhh, he's presently fighting to keep troops IN. Read newspapers much?