President Barack Obama announced Friday that the United States will withdraw all troops from Iraq by the end of the year, drawing to a close a long and conflict-ridden war that took the lives of about 4,500 troops.

Obama first pledged to end the war in Iraq while he was a presidential candidate. After taking office, he announced a strategy that would end the combat mission in Iraq and remove all U.S. troops by the end of 2011. More than 100,000 troops have been removed from Iraq, as the Iraqis have taken full responsibility for their country’s security, Obama said Friday in the White House’s James S. Brady Press Briefing Room. Nearly 40,000 U.S. troops remain in Iraq.

‘So today, I can report that, as promised, the rest of our troops in Iraq will come home by the end of the year,’ Obama said. ‘After nearly nine years, America’s war in Iraq will be over.’

In addition to the nearly 4,500 U.S. troops killed in the war in Iraq, more than 32,000 were wounded. More than 1 million Americans have served in Iraq, Obama said. From the beginning of the war in 2003 to Sept. 30, there have been between 103,158 to 112,724 civilian casualties in Iraq, according to the Iraq Body Count website.

From the beginning of the war through July 31, the Defense Department had allocated $704.6 billion for Operation Iraqi Freedom/Operation New Dawn, according to ABC News. That equals about $3.8 billion per month.

Kristi Andersen, a political science professor at Syracuse University, said bringing the troops home by the end of 2011 is a politically smart decision. But that doesn’t mean the announcement will help Obama’s re-election campaign.

‘I think the foreign policy thing — killing Osama bin Laden, the triumph of Obama’s policy in Libya and the good outcome of the NATO intervention, bringing the troops home — that’s all good, but I think right now people’s primary concern is the economy,’ Andersen said.

Obama said he spoke with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki a few hours before making the announcement to bring troops home by the year’s end. Obama said he and al-Maliki are in agreement about how to move forward.

For Lt. Col. Michael Kubala, a professor of military science and military instructor in SU’s Army ROTC program, the move to bring the troops home from Iraq by the end of 2011 has been a known commodity for a number of years now.

‘It’s been the intent to diminish the presence in Iraq over a number of years, the question was just down to how much and at what point do we pull the final folks out and that’s his decision ultimately,’ he said.

Although the war in Iraq will come to an end, Obama said the announcement reflects a larger transition. Obama credited the drawdown in Iraq with allowing the United States to refocus its fight against al-Qaeda and achieve success against its leadership, including killing bin Laden.

The announcement will bring the most emotional transition of all: the return of troops to their families in the United States.

Said Obama: ‘Today, I can say that our troops in Iraq will definitely be home for the holidays.’

jdharr04@syr.edu 

Published on October 23, 2011 at 12:00 pm

Contact Jon: jdharr04@syr.edu