Iraq says good-bye to U.S. troops

last updated 8 January 2015

So that was it? asked Abd Allah Abaas in the Iraq Kitabat. After nine years of occupation, the U.S. has chosen now to declare victory and pull out all remaining troops. What do they have to show for their efforts? The American people are net losers: They don’t have control of our oil, and the “billions of dollars they pumped into the pockets of weapons manufacturers did not lead to growth in the American economy, as economic experts and the free market doctrine had promised.” The Iraqis are bigger losers: The country is ravaged, with untold dead and displaced, and our water and electricity still not working. But perhaps we’re totting up the results prematurely—after all, it’s not really over, is it? “All of the information leaked confirms that the Americans will be staying in Iraq for a long time,” with tens of thousands of them working as “advisers and trainers” and who knows how many CIA agents. “It is likely that another round of talks will start about the possibility of an American army presence in Iraq as mercenaries, and not as military.”

Let’s hope so, said Amran al-Obaidi in Sotal Iraq. “I do not intend to justify the Americans’ remaining, nor do I wish to underestimate the capacity of Iraqis.” But the hysterical voices here that claim that any continued U.S. troop presence would amount to an occupation are “illogical and ridiculous.” The truth is, “Iraq needs continued U.S. support,” whether in the form of troops or contractors. Otherwise we face a power vacuum and maybe more war. Arabs in other countries have been the loudest in calling for the U.S. to get out of Iraq, said Rida al-Atar, also in Sotal Iraq. They say the U.S. forces are a stumbling block here. “Indeed they are—but a stumbling block standing in the way of the Baathists coming back to power, and preventing Iraq from turning into a religious country like the mullahs’ regime in Iran.” Just imagine how much worse it could have been here if Saddam Hussein’s tyranny had been abolished without foreign forces present. The country would have disintegrated.

Of course the Iraqis are afraid for their future, said Abdal Bari Atwan in the London-based Al-Quds Al-Arabi. The Americans had planned “for an endless stay,” building huge military bases like glittering cities, but they were finally defeated by a combination of fierce Islamic resistance and the perfidy of the Shiite Iraqi ruling class, which has made an alliance with Iran. Faced with this humiliation, President Obama declared victory and ended the war. But “what kind of victory is it when the U.S. has lost more than 5,000 soldiers, 30,000 wounded, and $1 trillion, and above all the country’s reputation?” What victory is built on the “martyrdom of at least 1 million Iraqis” and results in the hatred of the world’s Muslims? The U.S. should be “made to pay compensations for every killed Iraqi martyr and every destroyed stone for the sake of this country’s dignity.”