War nearly over, Obama says Iraq won’t stand alone

Pres­i­dent Barack Obama and Iraq’s Prime Min­is­ter Nouri al-Maliki lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns Mon­day at Arling­ton National Ceme­tery in Arling­ton, Va. (Asso­ci­ated Press | Car­olyn Kaster)

BEN FELLER

AP White House Correspondent

WASHINGTON — Eager to put the long and divi­sive Iraq war to rest, Pres­i­dent Barack Obama declared Mon­day “those days are over” with the last Amer­i­can troops head­ing home, but he pledged the U.S. would remain com­mit­ted to the fledg­ling gov­ern­ment they leave behind. He and Iraq’s leader somberly saluted America’s war dead at Arling­ton National Cemetery.

“A war is end­ing,” the pres­i­dent said, stand­ing with Iraqi Prime Min­is­ter Nouri al-Maliki at the White House. U.S. troops are leav­ing “with honor and with their heads held high,” said Obama, who strongly opposed the war as a can­di­date for the White House.

The last Amer­i­can troops are to be out of Iraq by Dec. 31. Thou­sands of oth­ers are still in Afghanistan.

Just 6,000 remain in Iraq, down from 170,000 at the war’s peak in 2007.

The with­drawal will cap a war in which nearly 4,500 Amer­i­cans were killed, roughly 32,000 were wounded, hun­dreds of bil­lions of dol­lars were spent and the Amer­i­can polit­i­cal debate was con­sumed until eco­nomic woes brought atten­tion back home.

Obama had already said weeks ago that he was pulling all troops by year’s end, leav­ing his appear­ance with al-Maliki to focus instead on what’s next — a rela­tion­ship both lead­ers described as rich in shared inter­ests, from edu­ca­tion to oil, pol­i­tics to security.

To the Iraqi peo­ple, who still face mas­sive chal­lenges in rebuild­ing a soci­ety ripped apart by nearly nine years of war, Obama said: “You will not stand alone.”

The United States, in fact, needs the help of Iraq in deal­ing with the volatile Mid­dle East and two of neigh­bors in par­tic­u­lar, Iran and Syria. In get­ting out of Iraq, Obama empha­sized that “our strong pres­ence in the Mid­dle East endures” and the United States won’t soften in its defense of its interests.

In the midst of a re-election run, Obama is using the war’s end to both honor the military’s sac­ri­fice and to remind the nation the unpop­u­lar war is end­ing on his watch. He is to deliver his war-is-over mes­sage in TV inter­views on Tues­day and then again on Wednes­day in remarks to troops at Fort Bragg, N.C.

Obama opposed the war from the start and even­tu­ally rode that stand to the White House.

In a 2002 speech dur­ing the months before the U.S.-led inva­sion of Iraq began, when Obama was a U.S. sen­a­tor from Illi­nois, he that “What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war.”

On Mon­day, speak­ing as a com­man­der in chief, Obama put the focus on Iraq’s future.

“I think his­tory will judge the orig­i­nal deci­sion to go into Iraq,” Obama said. What’s clear, he added, is that because of the huge sac­ri­fices by Amer­i­can sol­diers and civil­ians and the courage of the Iraqi peo­ple, “we have now achieved an Iraq that is self-governing, that is inclu­sive and that has enor­mous potential.”

Said al-Maliki: “Any­one who observes the nature of the rela­tion­ship between the two coun­tries will say that the rela­tion­ship will not end with the depar­ture of the last Amer­i­can soldier.”

Early signs of how Iraq may ori­ent itself could come from how it han­dles trou­bles in Syria, where the United Nations says 4,000 peo­ple have been killed in a gov­ern­ment crack­down. The cri­sis has exposed dif­fer­ences in the U.S. and Iraqi posi­tions: Obama says Syr­ian Pres­i­dent Bashar Assad must step down. Al-Maliki has not.

“I do not have the right to ask a pres­i­dent to abdi­cate,” said al-Maliki. He sug­gested anew that Assad’s removal could lead to a civil war in Syria that could spread across the region and be dif­fi­cult to con­trol, call­ing for some other solu­tion that would “avoid all the evils and the dangers.”

Obama said he and al-Maliki had “tac­ti­cal dis­agree­ments” on Syria but shared the goals of free expres­sion there with­out vio­lence. Obama said he had no doubt that Iraq was act­ing in its own inter­ests and not under the med­dling influ­ence of Iran. Tehran is Syria’s main backer.

Obama also acknowl­edged that the United States is press­ing Iran to return a U.S. sur­veil­lance drone cap­tured by the country’s armed forces.

State TV in Tehran reported Mon­day that Iran­ian experts were in the final stages of recov­er­ing data from it. The pres­i­dent would not com­ment on the national secu­rity impli­ca­tions for the United States, cit­ing clas­si­fied intelligence.

But he said of the drone: “We have asked for it back. We’ll see how the Ira­ni­ans respond.”

Obama spoke repeat­edly of Iraq as a nation demand­ing respect, describ­ing it as a sov­er­eign coun­try and an equal part­ner. And al-Maliki said his nation still wel­comed help, such as in draw­ing on Amer­i­can and other out­side exper­tise so that Iraq can bet­ter exploit its own wealth, par­tic­u­larly in oil.

Yet sig­nif­i­cant ques­tions remain over the details of the secu­rity rela­tion­ship between the U.S. and Iraq once all Amer­i­cans troops are with­drawn. Iraqi lead­ers have said they want U.S. mil­i­tary train­ing assis­tance for their secu­rity forces but have been unable to agree on what type of help they’d like or what pro­tec­tions they would be will­ing to give Amer­i­can trainers.

About 1 mil­lion U.S. troops have cycled through Iraq since the war began.

Fol­low­ing their meet­ings at the White House, Obama and al-Maliki paid respects to the fallen at Arling­ton National Cemetery.

At times, Obama’s lan­guage had the echoes of Pres­i­dent George W. Bush, par­tic­u­larly in the poten­tial for Iraq to help trans­form its part of the world. “Our goal is sim­ply to make sure that Iraq suc­ceeds, because we think a suc­cess­ful, demo­c­ra­tic Iraq can be a model for the entire region,” Obama said.

To all those who served in Iraq and to their fam­i­lies, Obama said the United States main­tains a “moral oblig­a­tion to all of them — to build a future wor­thy of their sacrifice.”

Posted by AP News on Dec 12 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.