Shameful Iraq pullout

Updated: 2011-12-19 07:49

(China Daily)

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More than eight years and seven months after then US president George W. Bush posed for photographs aboard the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln with the banner "Mission Accomplished" in the background, America's war in Iraq is finally, officially, coming to an end. US president Barack Obama has heralded it "a moment of success", which it probably is, for the United States and for him.

It has replaced a disobedient former head of state and his regime with a system of its own design, and President Obama has received a boost to his re-election hopes by fulfilling a core campaign promise at a politically opportune moment. There has already been an immediate rebound in his approval ratings.

While conceding, "Iraq is not a perfect place," the US president told returning troops last Thursday at Fort Bragg in North Carolina that "we're leaving behind a sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq".

A sentiment echoed by the top US commander in Iraq, Lloyd Austin, who said the Iraqi people now have an unprecedented opportunity to live in a relatively peaceful environment.

So the country's bloodiest, and costliest, military offensive since Vietnam, is being carefully portrayed as a victory.

It is true Saddam Hussein was a dictator and the stability under the heavy-handed strongman smelt of blood; but make no mistake, Iraq was a sovereign, self-reliant, and independent country.

On the other hand, the peaceful environment general Austin talked about remains as illusive and distant as it has since the US invasion of Iraq on March 20, 2003.

US military sources said that there were 500 to 750 attacks a month this year, including bombings, rocket attacks and assassinations. That is not a peaceful environment.

To many Iraqis the US invasion has resulted in anything but peace.

"The Americans did not leave modern schools or big factories behind them," Mariam Khazim, a Shiite resident of Sadr City, told the Associate Press. "Instead, they left thousands of widows and orphans. The Americans did not leave a free people and country behind them. In fact, they left a ruined country and a divided nation."

"This December will be a time to reflect on all that we have been through in this war," said Obama. And there is indeed plenty to reflect on. But, besides the human and financial cost to the US, it is also time to reflect on what the Iraqis have been through all these years.

Besides the 100,000, mostly civilian, Iraqi deaths, the occupation has taken a severe toll on the country. Americans are not the sole victims of the "unseen wounds of war".

And does anyone remember this was a war ostensibly waged to eliminate Saddam Hussein's "weapons of mass destruction", that proved to be non-existent.

It is not only shameful, it is dangerous if the discourse about the war continues skirting around the legitimacy issue.

The tide of war will not recede if a country can impose a war on another and shatter it without having to worry about the consequences.

(China Daily 12/19/2011 page8)