President Barack Obama claims that Americans left Iraq with “our heads held high." Unfortunately, no Iraqi or outsider was there to witness whether American troops and their political and military advisors were leaving with their heads “held high" or low. Neither President Jalal Talabani nor Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki attended the December 2011 departure ceremony held in a dusty courtyard at Baghdad's international airport to formally mark the US mission's end in Iraq. In fact, the last American combat unit slipped out of Iraq in the dead of the night after lying to their Iraqi colleagues about what they were doing. What about former US President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, the architects of the war? The less said about them the better, for even while in power they had not visited Iraq except unannounced, sometimes to the embarrassment of their Iraqi hosts. Such was the mayhem they created in Iraq and such was their fear for their own personal safety. That President Talabani and Prime Minister Al-Maliki, both of whom owe their position to the American invasion and occupation, failed to show up to publicly thank Bush for “liberating" Iraq was a painful reminder of America's utter failure and total humiliation. Whatever the drum beaters for the invasion, instigators of it, or facilitators of the occupation that followed may say, it is becoming increasingly clear that Bush's war which began on March 19, 2003 was the single worst foreign policy disaster in American history. By invading Iraq, the US did more to destabilize the region than all previous adventures by foreign powers and miscalculations by Arab leaders. Ten years after the war, Iraq remains a dangerous and unstable place with bombings and massacres taking place almost daily. An outfit proudly carrying the Al-Qaeda brand name, which did not exist in Iraq before the invasion, is now thriving in that country. Jihadi groups like the Islamic State in Iraq (ISI) have been on the upswing recently. In 2011 Iraq suffered more terrorist bombings and deaths from terror attacks than any other country but Afghanistan. State Department says that US citizens “remain at risk for kidnapping... (as) numerous insurgent groups...remain active..." Sunni-Shiite violence shows no sign of abating. Torture, exemplified by Abu Ghraib's theater of cruelty, secret gulags, rendition and drone killings marked the occupation. US infantry and Marines had to “pacify" or “liberate" towns like Ramadi and Fallujah again and again. The Coalition Provisional Authority had to hide deeper behind the massive cement wall it has constructed around its Baghdad compound. All this showed how false were the assumptions — that Iraqis would greet invading troops with flowers and sweets — on which the war was based. The US occupation was too weak to restore order or maintain basic services, but brutal enough to kill, injure, humilaite and inflame ordinary Iraqis. The war claimed more than 165,000 Iraqi lives, most of them civilians. German statesman Bismarck said: “Woe to the leader whose arguments at the end of a war are not as plausible as they were at the beginning." Bush's arguments were not plausible even at the beginning. The horde of political and sectarian demons unleashed by his folly may torment Iraqis for generations to come. A proud legacy indeed!
