Obama marks Iraq war’s end with a salute to troops

Pres­i­dent Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama arrive on the South Lawn of the White House in Wash­ing­ton Wednes­day. (Asso­ci­ated Press | Haraz N. Ghanbari)

ERICA WERNER

Asso­ci­ated Press

FORT BRAGG, North Car­olina — Pres­i­dent Barack Obama on Wednes­day saluted troops return­ing from Iraq, assert­ing that the nearly nine-year con­flict was end­ing hon­or­ably, “not with a final bat­tle, but with a final march toward home.”

Mark­ing the con­clu­sion of the war at a mil­i­tary base that’s seen more than 200 deaths from fight­ing in Iraq, Obama never tried to declare vic­tory. It was a war that he opposed from the start, inher­ited as pres­i­dent and is now bring­ing to a close, leav­ing behind an Iraq still struggling.

But he sought to pro­nounce a noble end to a fight that has cost nearly 4,500 Amer­i­can lives and more than 100,000 Iraqi lives.

“The war in Iraq will soon belong to his­tory, and your ser­vice belongs to the ages,” he said, applaud­ing their “extra­or­di­nary achievement.”

All U.S. troops are to be out of Iraq Dec. 31, though Obama has pledged the U.S. will con­tinue civil­ian assis­tance for Iraq as it faces an uncer­tain future in a volatile region of the world. Even as majori­ties in the U.S. pub­lic favor end­ing the war, some Repub­li­cans have crit­i­cized the with­drawal, argu­ing that Obama is leav­ing behind an unsta­ble Iraq that could hurt U.S. inter­ests and fall sub­ject to influ­ence from neigh­bor­ing Iran.

Sen. John McCain of Ari­zona, Obama’s one-time rival for the pres­i­dency, issued a par­tic­u­larly harsh ver­dict on his han­dling of Iraq. “I believe that his­tory will judge this president’s lead­er­ship with the scorn and dis­dain it deserves,” McCain said on the Sen­ate floor

Obama, appear­ing with first lady Michelle Obama, high­lighted the human side of the war, reflect­ing on the brav­ery and sac­ri­fices of U.S. forces now on their way back home. He recalled the start of the war, a time when he was only an Illi­nois state sen­a­tor and many of the war­riors before him were in grade school.

“We knew this day would come. We have known it for some time now,” he said. “But still, there is some­thing pro­found about the end of a war that has lasted so long.”

Obama noted the early bat­tles that defeated and deposed Sad­dam Hus­sein and what he called “the grind of insur­gency” — road­side bombs, snipers and sui­cide attacks.

“Your will proved stronger than the ter­ror of those who tried to break it,” he said.

Upon his arrival at Fort Bragg, Obama met with five enlisted ser­vice mem­bers who had recently returned from com­bat. He also met with the fam­ily of a sol­dier killed in Iraq who was the most recent, and poten­tially final, U.S. fatal­ity of the war.

Obama’s approval rat­ing on han­dling the sit­u­a­tion in Iraq has been above 50 per­cent since last fall, and in a new Asso­ci­ated Press-GfK poll, has ticked up four points since Octo­ber to 55 per­cent. Among inde­pen­dents, his approval rat­ing tops 50 per­cent for the first time since this spring.

With the econ­omy fore­most on people’s minds, fewer now con­sider the war a top issue. Fifty-one per­cent said it was extremely or very impor­tant to them per­son­ally, down from 58 per­cent in Octo­ber, plac­ing it behind 13 of 14 issues tested in the poll.

It’s the president’s first visit to Fort Bragg, which is home to Army Spe­cial Oper­a­tions, the 18th Air­borne Corps and the 82nd Air­borne, among oth­ers. Spe­cial Forces troops from Fort Bragg were among the first sol­diers in Iraq dur­ing the 2003 inva­sion and its para­troop­ers helped lead the 2007 troop increase.

In his speech, Obama said that Iraq “is not a per­fect place.”

But he added that “we are leav­ing behind a sov­er­eign, sta­ble, and self-reliant Iraq, with a rep­re­sen­ta­tive gov­ern­ment that was elected by its peo­ple. We are build­ing a new part­ner­ship between our nations.”

Posted by AP News on Dec 14 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.