U.S. President Barack Obama announced the end of the U.S. war in Iraq together with the visiting Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on Dec. 12, saying the remaining troops in Iraq will come home by the end of the year. Barack Obama, who consistently criticized the Iraq War, said history will judge the original decision to go into Iraq.
The war in Iraq is undoubtedly a major event in the 21st century. The American people and media are reflecting. Nearly 4,500 U.S. soldiers lie died, more than 30,000 wounded, and 3 trillion U.S. dollars was spent in this nine-year war. Furthermore, the fiscal deficit of the United States is closely related to the huge war expenses. However, the large cost paid by the United States did not see an equal return. Iran, its old enemy in the Middle East, has more influence than it in Iraq.
The Americans' reflection on the Iraq War, just as how they reflected on the Vietnam War years ago, mostly focuses on their own interests but rarely reviews the long-term impact of the war on Iraq. In the view of Americans, today's Iraq is "an Iraq that is self-governing, inclusive and has enormous potential.”
But the fact is that over the past eight years, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians were killed, millions became refugees, and a large portion of the social elite immigrated abroad. Agonies left by the war continue in Fallujah, where two fierce battles recently broke out.
Many newborns are malformed as the U.S. troops used white phosphorous bombs and other chemical weapons during the war. A local hospital doctor said, "As many as 12 babies born on Oct. 11 are malformed." The local water purification and sewage treatment systems have not yet been completed due to the shortage of reconstruction funds.
The locals are worried that terrorist organizations and anti-U.S. insurgent groups may stage a comeback. There is no adequate personal security, and the so-called political development and economic prosperity is nothing but empty talk.
The largest political legacy of the Iraq war is the so-called democracy. The United States claimed that it has made Iraq a model of democracy in the Middle East, but the fact is that Iraq is still facing a grim security situation and a bitter religious rivalry, with a weak foundation for democracy. More alarmingly, the country’s Kurdish and Sunni minorities are joining hands to seek greater autonomy, and terrorism has not been rooted out in the country. Is such a “model of democracy” really attractive?
The United States previously twice announced the end of the Iraq war and did not start withdrawing its troops from Iraq until nearly three years after its commitment on troop withdrawal, showing the great difficulty in ending a war. The superpower announced the end of the war once again, while Iraq remains a war-ravaged country with weak mobilization and action capabilities as well as long-term internal political and security risks.
The Iraq war has exerted considerable impact on Iraq and the United States as well as the system of international relations. At the beginning, the war had two purposes: to remove the possible threat posed by the Saddam Hussein regime’s weapons of mass destruction and to overthrow the Iraqi dictatorship supporting terrorism. However, no weapons of mass destruction were found even after the U.S. troops entered Baghdad, the capital of Iraq.
The then U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, who claimed at a United Nations conference that Iraq did have weapons of mass destruction, later said angrily that he was misled. The second purpose produced the opposite result.
Iraq used to have no relations with terrorist organizations but became a hotbed of terrorism after the U.S. invasion. The United States declared war on another sovereign nation without the support of the international community, so even the U.S. media have naturally used the word “invasion” when mentioning the Iraq war. The United States has set a bad example for other countries through this unjustifiable war.
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