At last there is a date for the end of Bush’s Iraq disaster, which has cost so much blood and turmoil to the Iraqis and instability in the region. All US forces should be out of Iraq by 2010 with the major withdrawal of combat troops in the next 18 months. It is a little longer than President Barack Obama promised the American voters as he sought the White House, but with recession on their minds, few object to the delay.
For Iraqis, the moment when their destiny is returned to their own hands is now defined. Unfortunately so too is the remaining opportunity for the men of violence to attack hated American interests. The bigots of Al-Qaeda know that once the US troops have gone, the new battlefield that Bush gifted them when he invaded, will disappear. If they continue their assault, it will be against the Iraqi people and the hollowness of their claims to be acting for the greater good of the Iraqis will be exposed for all to see. The killers will no doubt strive to so disrupt the fragile peace in Iraq that Washington, perhaps even at the request of the United Nations, will find it impossible to walk away. But this is to overlook the extraordinary way in which all Iraqis, regardless of community, have come together against violence.
The key was the recognition by both Sunni and Shiite leaders that Al-Qaeda-inspired inter-communal violence represented a greater threat than the US occupation. It was clear that the Americans were going to go at some point, without the fat contracts for US firms to rebuild what US jets had destroyed and without the pivotal influence for the US oil industry of which Washington once dreamt.
With the end of occupation fixed, another hollowness is also exposed. Bush claimed that Iraq was a terrorist state bristling with WMD and was actively sponsoring Al-Qaeda. These two wicked lies were used to justify the invasion and occupation, which, according to some accounts, has killed over 1.3 million Iraqis. To have left Saddam in power, lied Bush, would have endangered the entire Middle East. It was merely a different version of the Domino Theory claptrap about the rest of Southeast Asia turning Communist if North Vietnam defeated South Vietnam. The same rubbish indeed as that spouted about the two US interventions in Lebanon.
President Obama is very different from his gun-slinging predecessor. When he talks as he did Friday of building a lasting Iraqi-US relationship founded upon mutual interests and mutual respect, as Iraq takes its rightful place in the community of nations, there are reasonable grounds for believing him. For sure, conservative US interests, particularly in big business, will still hope to meddle and maneuver to their advantage in Iraq. But they no longer have a White House that will do whatever seems necessary to aid them. Bush was profoundly ignorant of Iraq and the wider region. Though they would not admit it, the former president and his cohorts have learned some hard truths about the Arab world from a war based on lies.
