Middle East Jubilation

Qaddafi is dead, and American involvement in Iraq is over!

The latter headline is the big news.  While there will still be American advisers in Iraq to try to help the fledgling government, all 39,000 troops will be coming home, as hoped, with the expiration of the U.S-Iraqi agreement signed in December 2008 to keep troops there for three years.  Reports have circulated that President Obama is only pulling American troops out because he could not get an agreement for an extended stay, but if he really thought it was worth staying, he would have tried to get such an agreement.

The Iraq War didn't really end for the United States despite the pullout of combat troops in August 2010.  At the time, I likened it to the cease-fire ending the Korean War, but American soldiers and Marines in Iraq, unlike in Korea after July 1953, continued to be killed after the combat troops left . . . meaning that firing had not ceased there.  There's no indication that Iraq is completely ready to take control of its own affairs, and there's the spectre of Iran hoping to expand its dominance in the Middle Eastern region.  But Iraq is somewhat more stable now than when Saddam Hussein fell, and Obama seems to be confident he can steer Iraq in the right direction without using the military.

Hey, look how he handled Libya.