US formally ends Iraq war with little fanfare

The US Forces Iraq col­ors are low­ered before being encased in a cer­e­mony in Bagh­dad, Iraq, Thurs­day. The cer­e­monies mark the offi­cial end of the US mil­i­tary mis­sion in Iraq. (Asso­ci­ated Press | Pablo Mar­tinez Monsivais)

LOLITA C. BALDOR

Asso­ci­ated Press

BAGHDAD — There was no “Mis­sion Accom­plished” ban­ner. No vic­tory parade down the cen­ter of this cap­i­tal scarred and rearranged by nearly nine years of war. No crowds of cheer­ing Iraqis grate­ful for lib­er­a­tion from Sad­dam Hussein.

Instead, the U.S. mil­i­tary offi­cially declared an end to its mis­sion in Iraq on Thurs­day with a busi­nesslike clos­ing cer­e­mony behind blast walls in a for­ti­fied com­pound at Bagh­dad air­port. The flag used by U.S. forces in Iraq was low­ered and boxed up in a 45-minute cer­e­mony. No senior Iraqi polit­i­cal fig­ures attended.

With that, and brief words from top Amer­i­can offi­cials who flew in under tight secu­rity still nec­es­sary because of the ongo­ing vio­lence in Iraq, the U.S. drew the cur­tain on a war that left 4,500 Amer­i­cans and more than 100,000 Iraqis dead.

The con­flict also left another 32,000 Amer­i­cans and far more Iraqis wounded, drained more than $800 bil­lion from America’s trea­sury and soured a major­ity of Amer­i­cans on a war many ini­tially sup­ported as a just exten­sion of the fight against ter­ror­ism after the 9/11 attacks.

As the last troops with­draw from Iraq, they leave behind a nation free of Saddam’s tyranny but frac­tured by vio­lence and fear­ful of the future. Bomb­ings and gun bat­tles are still com­mon. And experts are con­cerned about the Iraqi secu­rity forces’ abil­ity to defend the nation against for­eign threats.

“You will leave with great pride — last­ing pride,” Defense Sec­re­tary Leon Panetta told the troops seated in front of a small domed build­ing in the air­port com­plex. “Secure in know­ing that your sac­ri­fice has helped the Iraqi peo­ple to begin a new chap­ter in history.”

Many Iraqis, how­ever, are uncer­tain of how that chap­ter will unfold. Their relief at the end of Sad­dam, who was hanged on the last day of 2006, was tem­pered by a long and vicious war that was launched to find non-existent weapons of mass destruc­tion and nearly plunged the nation into full-scale sec­tar­ian civil war.

“With this with­drawal, the Amer­i­cans are leav­ing behind a destroyed coun­try,” said Mariam Khazim, a Shi­ite whose father was killed when a mor­tar shell struck his home in Sadr City. “The Amer­i­cans did not leave mod­ern schools or big fac­to­ries behind them. 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.”

Some Iraqis cel­e­brated the exit of what they called Amer­i­can occu­piers, nei­ther invited not wel­come in a proud country.

“The Amer­i­can cer­e­mony rep­re­sents the fail­ure of the U.S. occu­pa­tion of Iraq due to the great resis­tance of the Iraqi peo­ple,” said law­maker Amir al-Kinani, a mem­ber of the polit­i­cal coali­tion loyal to anti-American cleric Muq­tada al-Sadr.

Oth­ers said that while grate­ful for U.S. help oust­ing Sad­dam, the war went on too long. A major­ity of Amer­i­cans would agree, accord­ing to opin­ion polls.

The low-key nature of the cer­e­mony stood in sharp con­trast to the high octane start of the war, which began before dawn on March 20, 2003, with an airstrike in south­ern Bagh­dad where Sad­dam was believed to be hid­ing. U.S. and allied ground forces then stormed across the fea­ture­less Kuwaiti desert, accom­pa­nied by reporters, pho­tog­ra­phers and tele­vi­sion crews embed­ded with the troops.

The final few thou­sand U.S. troops will leave Iraq in orderly car­a­vans and tightly sched­uled flights.

The cer­e­mony at Bagh­dad Inter­na­tional Air­port also fea­tured remarks from Army Gen. Mar­tin Dempsey, the chair­man of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Gen. Lloyd Austin, the top U.S. com­man­der in Iraq.

Austin led the mas­sive logis­ti­cal chal­lenge of shut­ter­ing hun­dreds of bases and com­bat out­posts, and method­i­cally mov­ing more than 50,000 U.S. troops and their equip­ment out of Iraq over the last year — while still con­duct­ing train­ing, secu­rity assis­tance and coun­tert­er­ror­ism battles.

The war “tested our military’s strength and our abil­ity to adapt and evolve,” he said, not­ing the devel­op­ment of the new coun­terin­sur­gency doctrine.

As of Thurs­day, there were two U.S. bases and about 4,000 U.S. troops in Iraq — a dra­matic drop from the roughly 500 mil­i­tary instal­la­tions and as many as 170,000 troops dur­ing the surge ordered by Pres­i­dent George W. Bush in 2007, when vio­lence and rag­ing sec­tar­i­an­ism gripped the coun­try. All U.S. troops are slated to be out of Iraq by the end of the year, but offi­cials are likely to meet that goal a bit before then.

The total U.S. depar­ture is a bit ear­lier than ini­tially planned, and mil­i­tary lead­ers worry that it is a bit pre­ma­ture for the still matur­ing Iraqi secu­rity forces, who face con­tin­u­ing strug­gles to develop the logis­tics, air oper­a­tions, sur­veil­lance and intelligence-sharing capa­bil­i­ties they will need in what has long been a dif­fi­cult region.

Despite Pres­i­dent Barack Obama’s ear­lier con­tention that all Amer­i­can troops would be home for Christ­mas, at least 4,000 forces will remain in Kuwait for some months. The troops will be able to help final­ize the move out of Iraq, but could also be used as a quick reac­tion force if needed.

Despite the war’s toll and unpop­u­lar­ity, Panetta said ear­lier this week, it “has not been in vain.”

Dur­ing a stop in Afghanistan, Panetta described the Iraq mis­sion as “mak­ing that coun­try sov­er­eign and inde­pen­dent and able to gov­ern and secure itself.”

That, he said, is “a trib­ute to every­body — every­body who fought in that war, every­body who spilled blood in that war, every­body who was ded­i­cated to mak­ing sure we could achieve that mission.”

Iraqi cit­i­zens offered a more pes­simistic assess­ment. “The Amer­i­cans are leav­ing behind them a destroyed coun­try,” said Mariam Khazim of Sadr City. “The Amer­i­cans did not leave mod­ern schools or big fac­to­ries behind them. Instead, they left thou­sands of wid­ows and orphans.”

The Iraq Body Count web­site says more than 100,000 Iraqis have been killed since the U.S. inva­sion. The vast major­ity were civilians.

Panetta echoed Pres­i­dent Barack Obama’s promise that the U.S. plans to keep a robust diplo­matic pres­ence in Iraq, fos­ter a deep and last­ing rela­tion­ship with the nation and main­tain a strong mil­i­tary force in the region.

U.S. offi­cials were unable to reach an agree­ment with the Iraqis on legal issues and troop immu­nity that would have allowed a small train­ing and coun­tert­er­ror­ism force to remain. U.S. defense offi­cials said they expect there will be no move­ment on that issue until some­time next year.

Obama met in Wash­ing­ton with Iraqi Prime Min­is­ter Nouri al-Maliki ear­lier this week, vow­ing to remain com­mit­ted to Iraq as the two coun­tries strug­gle to define their new rela­tion­ship. End­ing the war was an early goal of the Obama admin­is­tra­tion, and Thursday’s cer­e­mony will allow the pres­i­dent to ful­fill a cru­cial cam­paign promise dur­ing a polit­i­cally oppor­tune time. The 2012 pres­i­den­tial race is roil­ing and Repub­li­cans are in a fero­cious bat­tle to deter­mine who will face off against Obama in the election.

Posted by AP News on Dec 15 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.