Welcome Home Troops And Happy Holidays!
I remember very well how during the Bush administration, the mere mention of pulling our troops out of Iraq made people like Lindsey Graham, John McCain, Vice President Cheney and his minions go nuts and start ranting about how leaving Iraq would be admitting defeat, as if just staying there for the rest of time would somehow turn it into winning. Their reasoning has never made any sense, but neither was their reasoning for getting us in there in the first place.
The Iraq war will go down in history as the most stupid venture our country ever entered into and the most costly by every measure. The evolving justifications for the war just got crazier as time went on. It was, of course, just one of the giant messes that was handed to President Obama when he was sworn in and one that he vowed to bring to an end and yesterday, it officially happened.
THE US flag was lowered in Baghdad today in a ceremony to mark the end of the Iraq war after almost nine years.
American military operations have been wound up and Barack Obama marked the milestone with a speech to troops in the US yesterday.
The president applauded the soldiers who served, the 4,500 who died and the thousands wounded.
Speaking at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, he said: “Iraq’s future will be in the hands of its people. America’s war in Iraq is over.
“On behalf of a grateful nation, I’m proud to finally say these two words: Welcome home.”
President Obama did an amazing job at winding down the operation and making it possible for us to exit the country as he promised. It is one of the reasons why I voted for him and I am extremely glad that I did.
I’m going to just ignore the idiots like Glenn Greenwald and Jeremy Scahill who will surely try to distract people from this monumental day; they were out on the Twitterz this week completely ignoring the President’s accomplishment and obsessing about the NDAA, which roadkillrefugee covered the other day. For all the digital ink that people like Greenwald spilled on the mistake that was the Iraq War, you would think he would be singing the Presidents praises from high atop his perch at Salon.com — now that the war is over. I don’t visit that site anymore, but I can say with confidence that GG isn’t doing that.
There will be a lot of “yeah but what about…” coming from this camp in the near future. Some of the articles I scanned on this monumental event had “yeah buts” in the very first sentence of the article. They can’t even write one goddamn sentence of fact without qualifying it with negativity. Here is the first sentence from a story at the New York Times on the end of the Iraq War…
BAGHDAD — The United States military officially declared an end to its mission in Iraq on Thursday even as violence continues to plague the country and the Muslim world remains distrustful of American power.
Anyone remember Judith Miller and her role in selling the war back in early days of Bush/Cheney? I do. So it doesn’t come as a surprise that the line the NYT’s takes fits right in with the hawks like McCain and Graham who seem to love them some endless wars and apparently think the only good war is the one that never ends.
My feelings on both wars that were handed to President Obama has been that much of the violence in both countries stems from us simply being there and occupying and destroying their land. It’s one of those vicious cycles the Republicans got themselves into. It’s like painting a giant target on your back and then wondering why people are shooting at you.
It’s over, done, finished….we’re out of there. And I think we should all stop and take a minute to be thankful that President Obama fulfilled his promise to get us the hell out of Iraq.
Now, let’s get the hell out of Afghanistan too.
Extreme Liberal's Blog 
Finally a promise he kept. We need to drop the idea that we should police the world and everyone else should feel the way we do. If there is unrest in foreign countries let them deal with it and we should stay out. Ron Paul has the right idea and pull all foreign aid including Israel and worry more about what is happening in this country.
Good.
The withdrawl was well done.
Afghanistan I think will be something that is way more difficult to end unfortunately. However I do believe that it will end in the near future unless a republican becomes president which will be very unfortunate. I’d like to believe that Obama will get a second term but I never under estimate the stupidity of the American people.
Hey Jeff…so far, I have no reason to doubt that we will get out of Afghanistan right on schedule. President Obama has proven that he can stick to a schedule with the Iraq pullout. The media and the spinners were in denial as he was doing it and some still refuse to accept that we are actually out of Iraq. You should see some of the comments over at ABLC. :)
I think President Obama is doing exactly what he said he would do with Afghanistan, weaken Al Qaeda, stabilize the country and back out most of our troops. I suspect we will be leaving behind more than in Iraq, but maybe not.
Baloney, skunkrunner, in so many ways. Obama promised us health care reform, and he kept that promise. He promised to restore FEMA, and he DID. He promised us no US troops on the ground in Libya.
If Ron Paul and his wretched son Curly had their way, blacks would no longer get served in restaurants. So shut your bloody libertarian broomhole.
For what it’s worth, I was celebrating the end of the war and obsessing about the NDAA at the same time :) So happy we are done with Iraq, and I noticed how the end came with very little fanfare, which I can also respect — if this was W, I’m sure there would have been endless bragging involved.
The only sane conditions under which we should leave Afganistan is the complete defeat of the terrorists. Anything else is at best a retreat, at worst a surrender.
And leaving Afghanistan early does not “end the war”. it accelerates it and emboldens the terrorists.
“My feelings on both wars that were handed to President Obama has been that much of the violence in both countries stems from us simply being there and occupying and destroying their land.”
This is rather untrue. The attacks from both of these countries forced us to occupy, and lingering terrorism has forced us to remain for a long time. And the US has spent a lot of money to rebuild both of these countries, which were destroyed by the terrorist regimes before the US overthrew them.
And unless we get rid of the remaining terrorists, the violence will only continue.