{"id":10410,"date":"2023-04-10T11:45:30","date_gmt":"2023-04-10T11:45:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=10410"},"modified":"2023-04-10T11:45:30","modified_gmt":"2023-04-10T11:45:30","slug":"two-decades-later-the-war-in-iraq-is-over-right","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=10410","title":{"rendered":"Two Decades Later, the War in Iraq Is Over\u2014Right?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>\n\n&#8220;President Barack Obama announced he was &#8220;responsibly ending the war in Iraq&#8221;&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/obamawhitehouse.archives.gov\/realitycheck\/the-press-office\/remarks-president-barack-obama-ndash-responsibly-ending-war-iraq\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">in 2009<\/a>, shortly after he came to office, in part on the strength of his condemnation of Bush&#8217;s decision to invade. The combat mission officially concluded for a second time two years later, in 2011, with&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/world\/2020\/01\/11\/invaders-allies-occupiers-guests-brief-history-us-military-involvement-iraq\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">around 700<\/a>&nbsp;U.S. troops remaining behind in an advise-and-assist role,&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/sgp.fas.org\/crs\/natsec\/R44116.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">along with<\/a>&nbsp;several thousand U.S. contractors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But once IS started grabbing land in Iraq and neighboring Syria in 2014, committing anachronistic atrocities&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/theweek.com\/articles\/443891\/america-complicit-isiss-rise-but-that-doesnt-mean-should-bomb-iraq\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">along the way<\/a>, the Obama administration went back in. This second round never included a U.S. ground presence anywhere near the scale of the 160,000 American soldiers (<a href=\"https:\/\/sgp.fas.org\/crs\/natsec\/R44116.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">plus nearly<\/a>&nbsp;as many contractors) deployed during the 2007 surge. But U.S. forces&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/world\/2020\/01\/11\/invaders-allies-occupiers-guests-brief-history-us-military-involvement-iraq\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">again numbered<\/a>&nbsp;in the thousands and continued to do so until the Iraqi government in 2020 asked then-President Donald Trump to make another exit plan.The Trump administration&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/religion-mike-pompeo-middle-east-baghdad-iran-182bae76452d7565b0a3d840ff0369cb\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">dismissed that request<\/a>, so it wasn&#8217;t until the end of 2021 that President Joe Biden&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2021\/12\/09\/world\/middleeast\/us-iraq-combat-mission.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">announced the third<\/a>&nbsp;end of the U.S. combat mission in Iraq. This time, about 2,500 U.S. soldiers stayed behind to advise and assist\u2014<a href=\"https:\/\/reason.com\/2022\/12\/22\/americas-loose-ends-in-the-middle-east\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">indefinitely<\/a>.&#8221;<br><a href=\"https:\/\/reason.com\/2023\/03\/20\/two-decades-later-the-war-in-iraq-is-over-right\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">https:\/\/reason.com\/2023\/03\/20\/two-decades-later-the-war-in-iraq-is-over-right\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;President Barack Obama announced he was &#8220;responsibly ending the war in Iraq&#8221; in 2009, shortly after he came to office, in part on the strength of his condemnation of Bush&#8217;s decision to invade. The combat mission officially concluded for a second time two years later, in 2011, with around 700 U.S. troops remaining behind in an advise-and-assist role, along with several thousand U.S. contractors.<br \/>\nBut once IS started grabbing land in Iraq and neighboring Syria in 2014, committing anachronistic atrocities along the way, the Obama administration went back in. This second round never included a U.S. ground presence anywhere near the scale of the 160,000 American soldiers (plus nearly as many contractors) deployed during the 2007 surge. But U.S. forces again numbered in the thousands and continued to do so until the Iraqi government in 2020 asked then-President Donald Trump to make another exit plan.<\/p>\n<p>The Trump administration dismissed that request, so it wasn&#8217;t until the end of 2021 that President Joe Biden announced the third end of the U.S. combat mission in Iraq. This time, about 2,500 U.S. soldiers stayed behind to advise and assist\u2014indefinitely.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[552,1545,836,1256,419,108,115,175,619,158],"class_list":["post-10410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article-share","tag-conflict","tag-invasion","tag-iraq","tag-isis","tag-syria","tag-terrorism","tag-terrorists","tag-troops","tag-united-states","tag-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10410"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10410\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10411,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10410\/revisions\/10411"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}