Americans Have Always Been Foreigners in Iraq

The war is over and the American troops can begin a relaxed trip back home, even if Iraq’s future remains uncertain.

Nine years. Nearly 4,500 soldiers killed, tens of thousands wounded and even more dead civilians and refugees. Even as a senator in Chicago, Barack Obama began his career making no secret of his opposition to the U.S. invasion of Iraq. It wasn’t his war. It was mainly a Bush family war, and it belonged as well to those who thought tyranny could be bombed away and simply replaced with human rights and democracy.

Now the U.S. president is calling the remaining 43,000 U.S. troops home by the end of the year. They haven’t left their fortifications in a long time and the obligation to provide security, justice and order now rests with the Iraqi military and police forces. Like it or not, a majority of the Iraqi people now obviously prefer going it alone rather than having an occupying force on their soil because the Americans in Iraq have always been foreigners despite any changes in military and political strategy.

Now it’s the time when the soldiers can say, “We’re coming home.” Those young soldiers who were stationed, at times unwillingly, in Iraq during the height of the terrorism will now be able to breathe more easily. Those who got marching orders to Baghdad or into the Sunni Triangle could never be sure if they would ever march back out again. This war had begun to sap the nerves of these men as well as the nerves of an entire nation, just as the Vietnam War has done before. It is better that it is over.

The Iraqis didn’t want American troops there any longer.

The soldiers will come home between Thanksgiving and the end of the year, and with Osama bin Laden’s death, Obama will have closed another chapter in history. His statement that he would bring the troops home with the approval of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki wasn’t exactly true, however.

Obama would have preferred to withdraw the troops starting next year. The Americans still have little confidence that the Iraqis will be able maintain order in their nation on their own. But the Iraqis didn’t want the occupation to continue. Now, with the toppling of Saddam Hussein and the establishment of an admittedly fragile Iraqi democracy, they are able to say it is time for the U.S. troops to go home and let them fend for themselves.

Iraq’s future is uncertain in many respects. Tehran will use the U.S. withdrawal to expand its power there with the help of radical Shiites. The Kurds cast a wary eye toward Baghdad. The Sunni tribes still seek their rightful place in the new Iraq. It is easy to doubt that they will be able to deal with all these issues in the absence of the U.S. Army. But the withdrawal puts to rest the lie that the United States fought this war for the imperialist purpose of controlling and oppressing the Middle East. Imperialists don’t withdraw just because a democratically elected government asks them. So for that reason and others: Happy holidays, soldiers!