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US President Barack Obama
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In a rare Oval Office address, US president Barack Obama on Tuesday night declared an end to the seven-year-old Iraq war launched by president George W Bush. Obama then pivoted awkwardly from guns to butter, promising to refocus the government from contesting wars to nursing the fragile economy.
“Operation Iraqi Freedom is over,” said Obama.
“Ending this war is not only in Iraq’s interest - it is in our own… We have met our responsibility. Now, it is time to turn the page,” said Obama speaking from the Oval Office in primetime — a move calculated to reach out to war-weary Americans focused on their economic problems.
Everyone agrees that Bush’s Iraq war started over an appalling mistake or an outrageous lie that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The US has paid a steep price after seven years, five months and 12 days of being in Iraq: Over 4,400 soldiers dead, 35,000 wounded and over $700 billion spent, according to the Congressional budget office.
Stuck in a rut with a sputtering economy and his plunging ratings, Obama signaled that America’s “most urgent task” was now to “restore our economy”. The honeymoon between Washington and Wall Street has turned to bitter recriminations.
Even liberal, pro-Democrat Silicon Valley has hit out at Obama. Last week, Paul Otellini, chief executive of Intel, slammed Obama, saying, it was “uncertainty” regarding legislation, regulation and taxes that was keeping US companies from doing anything productive with their big piles of cash.
In an effort to reach out to Americans, Obama sent a strong signal that the July 2011 date to begin withdrawing American forces from Afghanistan was firm. “Make no mistake: This transition will begin - because open-ended war serves neither our interests nor the Afghan people’s,” he said. Obama said the US troop drawdown will allow a shift of troops and materiel to the fight in Afghanistan.
The US plans to reduce the number of US troops in Iraq to less than 50,000 by the month-end. According to CNN, there will be 96,000 US troops on the ground in Afghanistan — more than three times the number there at the beginning of Obama’s term.
Analysts say Obama’s challenge was convincing Americans that Afghanistan was a worthy cause even if Iraq was not. They agreed that the US withdrawal from Iraq would boost the US campaign in Afghanistan.
“The withdrawal from Iraq will make it easier for the US military to maintain the troop level in Afghanistan. We often forget how much stress the military has been under — the US was overextended and struggled to field enough troops for two wars — and the drawdown from Iraq should help to relieve some of the pressure.
The same units will not be redeployed again and again in both battlefields. Some units in Iraq are on their third deployment and the drawdown will give the military time to reconsolidate itself,” said Marina Ottaway, director, Middle East programme at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
During the 18-minute address, Obama made his goal the destruction of al-Qaeda, which American intelligence believes has only about 100 members in Afghanistan.
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