U.S. troops pulled back from Iraqi cities last week, a move that sparked dancing in the streets as Iraqis celebrated what was portrayed as the beginning of the end of the six-year U.S. occupation. Most of the 130,000 U.S. troops remaining in Iraq are now billeted in rural outposts, ahead of next August’s planned withdrawal of all combat troops. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki called the pullback “a great victory” and declared a “National Sovereignty Day.” President Barack Obama said that while “the Iraqi people are rightly treating this day as cause for celebration,” there would be “difficult days ahead.”
Responsibility for Iraq’s cities now falls to the homegrown Iraqi security forces, whose readiness is the cause of widespread apprehension. Violence against civilians has increased sharply in the last month, and will likely continue to rise in the run-up to January’s national elections. But Gen. Ray Odierno, commander of U.S. troops in Iraq, expressed confidence in the Iraqi forces.
It was hard watching Iraqis “break out the fireworks” to celebrate our withdrawal, said Michael Gerson in The Washington Post, but it was a proud day for us, too. Obama won’t admit this, but we were only able to withdraw from Iraq’s cities because President Bush’s troop “surge” brought about “one of the most extraordinary reversals of fortune in the history of American warfare.”
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Lest we forget, it almost ended very differently, said The Washington Times in an editorial. Had we left “precipitously” in 2007, as Democrats demanded, we very well could now be talking about a “Vietnam-style defeat.” What we’re witnessing “may not be ‘Mission accomplished,’ but we are getting closer.”
Unfortunately, the threat of civil war still “hovers on Iraq’s heat-rippled horizon,” said the Los Angeles Times. Even in a good month, hundreds of innocent Iraqis are still dying on the streets we want credit for making “safe.” Soon, with luck, Iraq will “return to its rightful owners—Iraqis,” but make no mistake: “Americans will always bear responsibility for this misbegotten war of choice.”
Continue reading for free
We hope you're enjoying The Week's refreshingly open-minded journalism.
Subscribed to The Week? Register your account with the same email as your subscription.
-
Putin’s threat to fracture Ukrainefeature Fears that Russia was building a pretext for an invasion of eastern Ukraine grew, as pro-Kremlin protesters occupied government buildings in three cities.
-
Curbing NSA surveillance
feature The White House said it will propose a broad overhaul of the National Security Agency’s domestic surveillance program.
-
Downsizing the military
feature A new budget plan for the Pentagon would save hundreds of billions of dollars by taking the military off its post-9/11 war footing.
-
Putin ratchets up pressure on Ukraine
feature Russian President Vladimir Putin put 150,000 troops at the Ukraine border on high alert and cut off $15 billion in financial aid.
-
Ukraine on the brink of civil war
feature Ukraine’s capital was engulfed in flames and violence when hundreds of riot police launched an assault on an anti-government protest camp.
-
Ukraine at the breaking point
feature An alliance of opposition groups vowed protests would continue until President Viktor Yanukovych is removed from power.
-
Dim prospects for Syrian talks
feature A long-awaited Syrian peace conference in Montreux, Switzerland, quickly degenerated into a cross fire of bitter accusations.
-
The fight over jobless benefits
feature A bill to restore federal benefits for the long-term unemployed advanced when six Republican senators voted with Democrats.