Joe Biden ends two of America's wars

MY PIECE IN TIMES ONLINE: As the mighty gas-turbine M1A1 Abrams battle tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles of US Army 3rd Infantry Division and US Marine Corps 1st Marine Division thundered over the Kuwaiti/Iraqi border in March 2003, victory over Saddam Hussein was never in doubt. So comprehensive was the defeat of the Iraqi dictator that when the tanks and other armoured vehicles eventually swept into Baghdad, an officer of the 3rd Infantry Division proudly boasted on Fox News: “Saddam Hussein says he owns Baghdad. We own Baghdad. We own his palaces, we own downtown.” It was the same story, though different in scale, two years earlier when an extraordinary combination of US special forces, CIA paramilitaries, backed by air power and Tomahawk cruise missiles fired from the Arabian Sea, helped to topple the Taliban government and rout the fleeing leaders of al-Qaeda and their foreign fighters. The two great US-led military victories were, tragically, short-lived. Eighteen years later in the case of Iraq and 20 years after the Afghanistan operation began, both wars have now come to an end for the United States. It has taken four American presidents to reach this point. George W Bush started both wars and prematurely declared that the Iraq mission as he saw it had been accomplished after the fall of Baghdad. Over the next eight years with the outbreak of a violent insurgency by disenfranchised Saddam loyalists, 4,700 US and allied troops died and more than 100,000 Iraqi civilians lost their lives. Barack Obama agonised over how to confront the mayhem in Iraq and was persuaded to send surge reinforcements. But he, too, declared an end to the combat operation in December 2011, only to reverse it when Isis reared its head and began grabbing territory on a vast scale. When Donald Trump became president he declared he had had enough of endless wars and put Baghdad and Kabul on notice that US troops would be withdrawn. But he failed to win a second term and lost his chance to fulfil his pledge. Biden took up the baton and breasted the finishing line. Following his announcement that the US combat mission in Iraq is finally over (third time lucky), switching to a training role, America’s Middle East policy will take on a new lower-profile status. In practical terms the change in Iraq is largely symbolic. US troops have not been engaged in combat for some time and it’s not clear how many of the 2,500 troops will actually come home. But Biden whose legacy will depend on what happens in Iraq and Afghanistan between now and 2024, has drawn a line. The difference with his decision on Afghanistan is that a US troop presence will remain in Iraq, both as a sign of Washington’s continuing strategic relationship with Baghdad and as a safeguard to monitor and forestall, if possible, future malign interference from Iran. The missions in both countries have come to an end based on the conclusion of the US military and the intelligence community that in Iraq, Isis, the raison d’etre for maintaining combat troops there, had been dispersed, disrupted and effectively defeated; and in Afghanistan so many al-Qaeda fighters had been killed that they would never again be a threat to the US homeland even if the Taliban were to provide the remnants of the terrorist organisation with sanctuary. Neither conclusion can be relied on. Isis may be realigning its power structures in Africa but with US combat troops gone from Iraq by the end of this year, there could be a resurgence; and in Afghanistan Isis is still a potent force for evil despite suffering a high attrition rate from relentless US and coalition special forces operations. In Iraq the change of mission became inevitable after that pivotal moment on January 3 2020 when Major-General Qasem Soleimani, leader of the Quds Force, the powerful overseas interventionist wing of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, was killed by a US armed drone attack soon after arriving at Baghdad international airport on a flight from Damascus. It caused outrage not just in Tehran but also in Baghdad. The political dynamic between the Baghdad government and Washington changed. When Mustafa al-Khadimi became prime minister in May 2020 he began the process of reducing the dependency on military ties to the US while at the same time making sure Washington remained a crucial ally. This suited the Biden doctrine based on ending America’s involvement in fighting other people’s wars. Biden’s political gamble, as far as Iraq is concerned, centres around Iran and whether the Tehran regime will try to exploit what it might perceive to be a reluctance on the part of America to stay involved in the region. However, other strategic changes have been taking place in the Middle East which could save Biden from future embarrassment. “An anti-Iran coalition has been forming over the past few years, signalled by the emergence of closer ties between Israel, the United Arab Emirates and even Saudi Arabia,” said Andrew Krepinevich, a former Pentagon official and senior fellow at the Hudson Institute think-tank in Washington. “Since strategy is about making choices and since the Biden administration appears intent on capping defence spending while upping the US efforts in the Western Pacific, it will have to take risks somewhere. I’d take it here rather than in the Western Pacific or Eastern Europe,” he said. Eric Edelman, a veteran Pentagon, state department and White House official who was undersecretary of defence for policy between 2005 and 2009, shares the view that not all is lost with the changing circumstances in Iraq. “With proper US training and enabling forces, the elite Iraqi units have demonstrated their ability. They have a bit more depth than their Afghan counterparts,” he said. “Much of this, of course, turns on perception and the question of Iranian influence will turn largely on that,” he said. “Iraqis have demonstrated repeatedly that they don’t want an overweening Iranian influence and presence in their country. An ongoing US presence, even if not a combat presence, if configured to strengthen the ability of the ministries of defence and interior to carry out their counter-terrorism operations , will certainly provide the Iraqi government with some ability to balance Iranian influence,” he said. He warned, however: “If the perception takes hold [in Tehran] that the US is in a wholesale retreat from the region then there will be other forces that fill the void, and many, if not all of them, won’t be particularly benign.”