EDITORIALS
Just fade away
U. S. troop withdrawal from cities worth some Iraqi over-celebration
It’s a good thing that the American soldiers in Iraq are such well-trained professionals. Otherwise they might have their feelings hurt by all the hoopla of the past few days.
All the celebrations occasioned by the removal of U. S. troops from most Iraqi cities, all the speechifying about how the magnificent Iraqi security forces faced down the forces of evil and held their glorious nation together.
When you’ve spent six years spilling blood and sweat, and sheding tears over the bodies of more than 4,300 comrades, being told that other people did your job and they’re, oh, so happy to see you go has got to hurt a little.
But it’s OK. In fact, it’s great. And American commanders, up to and including the commander in chief, know it.
Sometimes, soldiers get historic, Battleship-Missouri-in- Tokyo-Bay formal surrender ceremonies, ticker-tape parades and jet fly-overs. This time, our soldiers—and there are still 130,000 of them in Iraq—get to retire to their many bases and camps.
There they may be able to spend more time in air-conditioned rec halls and less time toting what must feel like a ton of body armor and combat gear around on 100-degree days. There they can choose to ignore the self-glorifying parades and the speeches by Iraqi President Nouri al-Maliki and others, celebrating another milestone in the return of Iraq self-rule with words that never mention American aid and strongly imply the end of an unwelcome occupation.
But all occupations become unwelcome after a time.
With this turn of events in Iraq coming so close to our own Independence Day, it would be appropriate for Americans to remember that a major cause of our own Revolution was growing resentment of the continued quartering of, and taxation for, the British troops that protected American colonists from the Indians and French.
American generals in Iraq, asked to comment on the situation, stick to the script. They say that they have been properly thanked and respected by their opposite numbers in the Iraqi government and that internal politics are no concern of theirs. And President Obama properly kept a low profile on the matter, making a pro-forma statement of support as part of a “newser” that was about something else.
No “Mission Accomplished” banners for this administration.
Because, of course, it isn’t over. It may yet turn out that the Iraqi security forces have secured very little, that tribal rivalries and Islamic extremism will go on. Then al-Maliki will have the hard choice of whether to issue, and Obama will have the hard choice of how to respond to, a call for American action that will go beyond the training and terrorist-hunting missions we have reserved for ourselves.
Today, at least, there is hope that none of that will be necessary. Our professional soldiers will be happy to give up the celebratory fly-over of jets if it means they won’t have to evacuate from the embassy roof in helicopters.
They will be happy to just fade away.
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