US leaves Iraq--Thank God!

In August 2010, Barack Obama declared the "combat" portion of the Iraq War was over. Now, the final 4,000 troops left on Sunday about 0745 local time. He tried to extend the US presence but Iraq, now a sovereign nation, decided not to.

Now to the questions that bothers everyone, including Iraq. Is the country stable enough to continue on its own? Will it become an Iranian satilite? Will it hold together without US "glue" or will the Shia-Sunni divisions in Iraqi society tear it to pieces? And let us not forget the Kurds in the north.

I don't think Syria is a threat since Western Iraq is basically an uninhabitable desert. Turkey gets along with Iraq but it is the Kurds that Anakara is worried about. Kuwait wont be a problem but Iran might.

Iraq's problems, as we can see, are mainly internal. If they can handle it, then the mission is a success. If not, then what?

The overall question that haunts America is this: "Was it worth it?"

4,500 Americans died and we may never know how many Iraqis (100,000?) died in the 2003-2011 divisive war that began over Weapons of Mass Destruction that were never found and a link between Saddam Hussein (happily deceased--good bye and good riddance) and al-Qieda that proved to be tenuous at best.

Then President Bush assured us the Iraqis would welcome us with "dates and wine" and shouted "Mission Accomplished" from an aircraft carrier deck. A year later, US troops were fighting a guerrilla war with those Iraqis and "Mission Accomplished" was a bad, and bitter, joke. What started with a display of "Shock and Awe" turned into fighting foot by foot through the rubble of Fallujah thal looked disturbingly like the Battle of Hue in 1968 and on occasion, Plataea in 427 BC. In 2006, the networks were referring to the anarchy in Iraq as a civil war and in 2007, Bush sent a "surge" of 20,000 more troops to tighten the lid.

It worked but why was it not used earlier?

Broke superpowers trying to do something this big on the cheap find themselves flailing and bloodied...they forget two bits of classic advice: (1) do it right the first time and (2) economy of motion. Then there is Number Three, or maybe it should be Number One -- make sure you you have a reason to be there.

Many people have compared Iraq to Vietnam. All wars have a certain common base to them but these can't be traced one on top of the other point for point. That is for another time. I can point out though no one had to leave a besieged embassy by helicopter.

We walked out of there on our own with no one shooting at us.

A trillion dollars (maybe more) later that could have been used elsewhere and we have to have a rapid reaction force of 4,000 in Kuwait just in case.....

Let's call it a win, leave, and don't even look over our shoulder.

The temptation to flip the place the bird might be too strong to resist.....