US Leaves Iraq

On board the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, with the entire crew assembled on deck, and visibly pleased with himself, President George W. Bush went straight to the point: “Mission accomplished.” It was May 1, 2003, and U.S. troops had occupied Baghdad, the great cave that had sheltered the world’s second most wanted man, Saddam Hussein (the first was still Osama bin Laden, and remained so for a long time). It had taken the invading army a month and a half from the night of March 19-20, 2003, when Bush had given the order to attack — without sufficient legal and regulatory backing from the U.N. — after a prolonged and unsavory manipulation of the facts to justify the invasion. Amid a rarefied political climate, several government leaders — among them the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, and the Spanish President, Jose Maria Aznar — joined with Bush in deciding to unleash a war which seriously compromised the international legal order, led to deep divides in the European Union and fostered a dangerous alienation between East and West.

The social, legal and political consequences of that decision, for the most part negative, are still the subject of study and controversy. Naturally the world will struggle to recover from the damage inflicted by a U.S. government which, at that time, was still motivated by post-9/11 syndrome. If one thing has become clear, it is that fear, revenge and business perspectives are conducive neither to peace nor to negotiated, peaceful solutions to conflict situations.

It has taken eight years and a few months for the then-victorious troops to complete their withdrawal from Iraq in a retreat that has not been presented as such, but rather as if the object of the mission had in fact been accomplished, despite the absence of victory parades and solemn ceremonies to celebrate and mark the troops’ return. President Barack Obama, who gave the order to return home, has seen fit to state that his troops are leaving behind a “sovereign, self-reliant and democratic Iraq,” with a representative government elected by its people. He didn’t mention that Iraq has been left devastated and despoiled, with tens of thousands of fatalities and refugees. Almost simultaneously with Obama’s words — destined to go down in history, like those of Bush — the strained sectarian relations between the Shiite majority and the Sunni minority ostensibly deteriorated.

With both branches of Islam represented in a brand new parliament and a precarious unity government, Iraq’s Sunni Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi fled to Iraqi Kurdistan last week to avoid accusations of organizing terrorist operations against his own people. The Shiite Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, issued an immediate warrant for his arrest. And all the while, terrorist bombs go off in the country’s marketplaces and nerve centers, causing numerous civil victims among a population mired in misery.

During the occupation, shameful human rights violations took place at Abu Ghraib Prison, and despot Saddam Hussein, unshaven and emaciated, was pulled from the spider hole where he had been hiding to be hung on live TV. The war is over, the chaos goes on.