With row upon row of US troops and a huge American flag behind him, the scene was reminiscent of that famous occasion when President George W. Bush declared “Mission Accomplished” in Iraq. The stage-managed event then was on a battleship. This recent spectacle was no less cleverly choreographed, but even less convincing. With his ratings low in the Opinion polls and with a Presidential election looming on the horizon, it would have been just what President Obama wanted if he could have declared “Mission Accomplished”. After almost nine years in Iraq, the last US troops would be returning home before December 31. Under the circumstances, President Obama just had to make the best of a bad job, choosing to welcome the troops home, rather than congratulate them on victory. It was a great photo opportunity for a President who hasn't achieved much, but it wasn't much more than that. All of that change that was promised before the last Presidential election really came to nothing. The truth is that most Americans have for some time now preferred to forget their county's war in Iraq. They have moved on and don't talk about Iraq any more. Their own jobs and mortgages are more pressing than the thousands dead. They know that there isn't much to be proud of in what the US has achieved, despite all publicity to the contrary coming out of the Department of State. In a nation given to self-praise, that is not good. Korea was a disaster. Vietnam was a humiliation. Iraq, for the American people, is best forgotten. At a similar ceremony in Baghdad the next day, led by US Defence Secretary Panetta, similar platitudes were mouthed to the troops, telling them how they had brought freedom and democracy to the region. Not one representative of the 41-member coalition of countries that had invaded Iraq was present at this final ceremony. Nor were there any Iraqi officials present. They had been invited but failed to turn up. In the Iraqi city of Fallujah, on the other hand, thousands went out into the streets to celebrate the end of their country's occupation by foreign soldiers. As one man declared, “the Americans sowed seeds of division and sectarianism from the first moments they were here”. The delinquent behaviour of many US servicemen and women, who tortured and abused the very ones entrusted to their safekeeping, will go down as shameful in the annals of war. Estimates of the cost of America's war in Iraq range from One trillion US Dollars to nearly Three and a half trillion. More than four thousand US troops have died. The most conservative estimates suggest that one hundred thousand Iraqi civilians have died, but this number, according to some, exceeds one million dead. 1.75 million Iraqis have been displaced. And all of this for what? When the United States and its followers invaded Iraq nine years ago we were told that they were going in to save the world from weapons of mass destruction. We were also told that the country was a key supporter of al-Qaeda terrorists. Hindsight has shown us all that there were no weapons of mass destruction. Not one. We also know that Saddam Hussein detested al-Qaeda and gave it no support whatever. What is much more sinister, though, is it seems that in the final days before the invasion, those who were telling us about weapons of mass destruction actually knew that there were none. The world wasmisled. President Obama described the US action in Iraq as an “extraordinary achievement”. Well, it was certainly that. He also declared that after nine years of carnage, “Iraq is not a perfect place.” Indeed it isn't. With internal security now in the hands of the Iraqis themselves they are left with a country where every car is a potential threat and where cities are divided up by glass walls and barbed wire. Checkpoints and concrete blocks bring some semblance of peace, but it is delivered by the army, not the police force. At its height, there were 170,000 US soldiers in Iraq. When the last of them finally slipped quietly over the border into Iraq earlier this week, there were no fanfares. Unlike the massive bombardments of “Shock and Awe,” which saw the destruction of Baghdad and the collapse of the nation into chaos, the end of the affair was done without a murmur. With US troops off the streets of Iraq, there now remain sixteen thousand diplomatic staff, including “security assistants” to protect them. The US embassy in Baghdad is its largest foreign embassy anywhere in the world. One wonders what exactly sixteen thousand staff will be required to do in an embassy. The numbers suggest they will be doing more than most embassies do. Whatever they will be doing, the US Administration can now turn its attention to its other war in Afghanistan and try to find ways of getting its soldiers out of another disaster. No country can fight two wars at the same time. The United States certainly can't. Its economy is in a mess and its worldwide influence is waning. In many ways reminiscent of the wave of popular uprisings that have swept across the Arab world, the US itself is now plagued by protesters who want to see an end to the kind of corporate greed that finances and flourishes on wars, whilst ordinary citizens struggle to make ends meet. While mortgages are being foreclosed and men are being thrown out of work, the US leaves Iraq with strong business ties. Someone will make a lot of money out of reconstruction. So are any of us seriously expected to believe the President's words when he talks about an extraordinary achievement? Does the President himself believe what his scriptwriters have given him to say? Has the US mission been accomplished in Iraq? If its mission was to intimidate other would-be world powers by a massive show of military might, then it has accomplished its mission. If it sought to placate its so-called allies into doing as they were told, then it succeeded. If it wanted to terrify regional dictators into towing the line and implementing US policy at the expense of their own people, then the US invasion and occupation of Iraq was a great success. For those hundreds of thousands of families who lost loved ones or whose lives and property were totally destroyed, then it was an unmitigated disaster. Inshallah, we shall never see its like again. British Muslim writer, Idris Tawfiq, is a lecturer at Al-Azhar University. The author of eight books about Islam, he divides his time between Egypt and the UK as a speaker, writer and broadcaster. You can visit his website at www.idristawfiq.com.
