More than six years ago, the U.S. government was talking about handing Iraq off to the Iraqis so American forces could leave. I called out the administration then in an Institute op-ed “The Iraqization Scam.” This was a couple years before pundits and policy wonks began calling the U.S. policy “Iraqization.” But now it looks like even I was optimistic, as cynical as I was about actual U.S. intentions to leave the country and region. It appears the U.S. will continue to occupy both Iraq and Afghanistan for the indefinite future, seeing as how the Mr. Nobel Peace Prize is in charge of the wars and, although more Americans want the U.S. to leave, it seems fewer are adamant about it as a political priority.
A few weeks ago, men and women from one of the most deployed brigades in the U.S. Army, the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division, returned home from Iraq. The Vice President and Dr. Jill Biden were at Fort Drum to welcome the veterans home and spoke about their personal experiences as a military family.
“The last thing that we want to see is an occasion where we have to send troops back into Iraq yet again so we are ending the combat phase of our involvement in Iraq for a second time,” The “end of the war” may bring some measure of relief to the American people, but it must be something of a sombre moment for those 50,000 troops, as they continue to go into combat operations with the bulk of the American public believing, because their president told them so, that the war is over and combat operations have ended.
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