Obama Announces Complete Withdrawal from Iraq

Finally, mission accomplished. “After nearly nine years, America’s war in Iraq will be over,” President Barack Obama announced yesterday [Oct. 21]. He didn’t do it from the solemnity of an aircraft carrier, like George Bush on May 1, 2003, but in the modest White House Briefing Room. But the primary difference between the two moments is that this time, truly, “the rest of our troops will be home for the holidays.”

It is the end of a cycle that has affected U.S. foreign policy and global security for a decade. Over is an era in which the U.S. tried to impose democracy through force, and concluded is the most unfortunate and tragic military venture since the Vietnam War. This nation has already left in Iraq more than 4,400 men, more than $1 trillion and tons of prestige with the pretext of destroying an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction that never existed. Obama is putting an end to this tragedy and has decided to do it definitively, without leaving a single soldier in Iraq. “This December will be a time to reflect on all that we’ve been though in this war,” said Obama.

Until the last moment, it was assumed that the American administration would maintain, upon completion of this years’ planned withdrawal, a considerable number (maybe several thousand) of the more than 40,000 soldiers that still remain. But various discrepancies that arose in the negotiations with the Iraqi authorities, especially their resistance to recognizing immunity of American forces, combined with Obama’s desire to definitively close this episode, have served to decide that the withdrawal will be total.

It is a decision with huge strategic implications. Without soldiers in Iraq, the U.S. loses an important base from which to operate in the Middle East, leaves the Iraqi government alone to face the still abundant threats of violence and creates a void in which the major regional power, Iran, can try to increase its influence. But, above all, the conviction that Iraq has become, for a number of reasons, an impossible venture has prevailed; and despite Obama saying yesterday that “the last American soldiers will cross the border out of Iraq with their heads held high,” the U.S. no longer has any glory to gain in this country.

Obama runs the risk that this measure will be interpreted as a withdrawal of American foreign policy, as proof that the U.S. currently cannot deal with several conflicts at the same time. In part, it is this. The economic crisis weighs in more than anything, and the U.S. needs to invest its money at home. But equally important is the fact that Obama wants to develop a new conception of the U.S.’ role internationally without the burden involved in an operation like Iraq.

The president assured that his government is collaborating with Nouri al-Maliki on a different level, as a relationship between equals. “[T]here will be some difficult days ahead for Iraq, and the United States will continue to have an interest in an Iraq that is stable, secure and self-reliant,” said Obama. He communicated his decision to the Iraqi prime minister by video before making it public and invited him to visit Washington in December to discuss these other forms of cooperation.

Al-Maliki and the majority of Iraqi leaders were interested in the U.S. leaving several thousand soldiers to continue training the Iraqi army and to guarantee that violence continues the downward trend it has taken in recent years. But one of al-Maliki’s principal allies currently, the Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, opposes American military presence, and this complicated the negotiations of the past weeks. Washington had advised for the soldiers who would remain in Iraq to be guaranteed full immunity from the laws of the nation, something that al-Maliki was not capable of conceding.

Al-Maliki fears, as well, that some Sunni groups that are currently less active will take advantage of the American withdrawal to step up attacks against the government. And some others are worried that Iran will try to fill the void that it may create. Obama used his speech yesterday to issue a warning to this effect: “We’ll partner with an Iraq that contributes to regional security and peace,” he said, “just as we insist that other nations respect Iraq’s sovereignty.”

The definitive end to the American presence in this conflict has another relevant aspect that connects it to the next phased exit from Afghanistan and even to the recent death of Moammar Gadhafi and the fall of other dictatorships in the Arab world. “The tide of war is receding,” declared Obama. A different world is rising — a world that probably does not guarantee peace or eliminate the risks that other wars can break out in different places. But a different world that demands different conduct of civilized nations and in which battles like those in Iraq don’t fit, for being shameful and useless.