IT WAS altogether less triumphalist and more subdued than George Bush’s notoriously misconceived 2003 “mission accomplished” moment. But Barack Obama, who had previously described the nine-year Iraq war as “dumb” and made an election promise to bring the troops home, was still putting the best gloss on what has certainly not been the most glorious episode in the history of the US military and of the other politicians who led it into a $1 trillion war.
The president told troops in Fort Bragg on Wednesday that, as the last US combat troops begin to leave Iraq, the war is over – though he studiously avoided the word “victory” – and their comrades would leave “heads held high”, behind them “a solid, stable and representative” Iraq. He said the US left Iraq a better place than it had found. Yesterday in Baghdad US soldiers formally wrapped up the flag.
Whether Obama’s description of Iraq is one that would be recognisable to most dispassionate observers is another matter. For much of the Arab world the US presence was always an “occupation”, fraudulently justified both by a search for non-existent weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and by alleged links to the 9/11 conspiracy. And while it might be true to say America’s war in Iraq is over, Iraq’s own is not. Bombings and killings are a daily feature of life, deep Shia-Sunni sectarian divisions persist, a fragile powersharing government beholden to Iran stumbles on, and the crippled economy remains plagued by power shortages and corruption.
For this miserable state of affairs Iraqis and Americans have paid a terrible price. The Iraqi death toll is disputed but must run to hundreds of thousands, while the US lost 4,500 men, with a further 30,000 wounded, from the 1.5 million who served in the country.
The US conduct of the Iraq war also shaped the politics not just of the region in the post-9/11 era, but of important global dynamics. US unilateralism undermined the legitimacy of its “war on terror”, and its mendacity about WMDs sapped the credibility of anti-nuclear proliferation diplomacy on Iran. Far from hobbling Al-Qaeda, the Iraq quagmire provided a new recruiting ground for the organisation. US willingness to tolerate torture at Abu Ghraib was grist to the mill of worldwide anti-US movements, but also to Middle East tyrants like Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, whose lease of political life was certainly extended by the regional tensions.
In all, a heavy price for a misconceived mission. Obama’s Iraq balance sheet has only a heavy downside.