Our Observation

On Oct. 21, President Barack Obama announced the scheduled end of the Iraq war. For some, those were fighting words.

“After nearly nine years, the war in Iraq will be over,” Obama told an amassed crowd of reporters at the White House.

It was a closure that a large majority of Americans had been waiting for, some since the day the war had started. It was an eventuality that every remaining nation in the war’s original Combined Joint Task Force and Multi-National Force had preempted through full troop withdrawals. It was a moment that many in Iraq itself had called out for. It was a decision whose time, for many, had come and gone long ago.

Though there continue to exist arguments for and against continuing the war until some semblance of a concrete resolution is reached, the difficulty of defining such a moment has only grown more obvious. We are in overtime in the third longest war our nation has ever fought, with no clear winning play to be made.

The end to the war was an inevitability, but one we feared would never come. Now we have that final moment pinpointed to the day: Dec. 31, 2011.

Many rejoiced at the announcement. Videos played of Iraqis celebrating.

But because the announcement of total troop withdrawal came out of Obama’s mouth, his political detractors immediately called the decision a “failure.” Suddenly everything that so many had asked for was considered foolish and premature.

Strangely, those same people, namely Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, reserved such derision three years ago, when the exact same timeline was set out.

Three years ago, with a month left in his final term, then-President George W. Bush announced his signing of an agreement for the drawdown and full removal of troops from Iraq. The end date was Dec. 31, 2011.

“As promised,” Obama characterized his announcement that we would honor that agreement.

Those Iraqis who were celebrating in the streets? Some of them were likely among the groups enraged by the original 2008 U.S.-Iraq Status of Forces Agreement that announced that total troop withdrawal was still more than three years away. Now that the agreement has been reinforced by Obama, they have a reason to celebrate: That long wait is finally over.

In an ironic twist, this may have been one of the most bipartisan decisions made in the history of the Iraq war since the vote to go to war in the first place.

But legislators such as Graham fail to see this as a bipartisan olive branch that Bush had previously endorsed, preferring to characterize it as the worst decision we could possibly have made, simply because the man delivering the reminder was from the opposite side of the political aisle. Never mind that it was the exact same decision that had been made by one of Graham’s political bedfellows three years ago.

Like the war, that argument lacks the political expediency to gain support. Like the war, it’s not worth fighting anymore.