Good News About America

I’ve been wanting to write this post for several weeks now, but I’ve been at something of a loss as to exactly what I want to say.

Fulfilling another one of his major campaign promises, President Obama has now removed all combat troops from Iraq. After more than seven years, this pointless, costly war is finally over. That’s certainly good news. But is it really over?

We still have “support” troops in Iraq, and it’s unlikely that we’ll stay out if the country appears to be falling into civil war. While it was a bad idea to invade in the first place, and it was pretty obvious that there was no way the occupation was going to go anywhere near as well as President Bush predicted, the invasion and subsequent mismanagement makes the country our responsibility. We needed to get a functioning government into place (although imposing a modern democracy on a third world country is, shall we say, not easy), get the violence under control, declare victory, and get out. Metaphorically speaking, anyway…I don’t think anybody’s actually declared victory in Iraq since Bush’s stunt on the aircraft carrier all those years ago.

Mission accomplished?