American Troop Withdrawal from Iraq after a Successful Counterterrorism Mission

    

    The last American troops withdrew from Iraq last week, after a successful twelve-year mission against the Islamic State terrorists.  

    Most United States troops had withdrawn last year, but as I had posted, the last few hundred had remained in the semi-autonomous Kurdish region, by demand of the Kurds, to continue counter-terrorism operations against the Islamic State, the offshoot of al-Qaeda, the Islamist terrorist organization responsible for the September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attacks on America that killed nearly 3,000 people.  There had also been attacks targeting American troops in Iraq by Iranian-backed militias, which the U.S. has struck back at periodically.  The U.S. withdrawal eliminates the American troops as targets.  The mission began in 2014 by the invitation of Iraq after the Islamic State, based in Syria, had conquered large swaths of Syria and Iraq and proclaimed a caliphate.  The U.S.-led international mission was successful against Islamic State.  As fewer American troops are needed, they are relocating to neighboring Jordan.  The withdrawal is thus on U.S. terms, not a defeat.  A normal bilateral security agreement would have to be negotiated between the U.S. and Iraq.  Iraq is purchasing U.S. and other weapons to defend Kurdistan from Iranian attacks.

    Most Iraqi militias have not disarmed, as the Iraqi government is demanding or at least asking them to place their heavy weapons under state control, particularly the Iranian-backed militias.  The militias in Iraq are nominally part of the Iraqi armed forces.

    The American-led mission in Iraq since 2014 was separate from the 2003 Liberation of Iraq, in which the tyrannical Baathist regime of Saddam Hussein, a serial aggressor and state sponsor of terrorism, was overthrown after repeated violations of the 1991 cease-fire after the Liberation of Kuwait from Iraqi aggression and United Nations resolutions against Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction programs.  The premature withdrawal of U.S.-led international forces from the Arab State in 2011 necessitated the return of American troops to Iraq in 2014, as the Islamic State took advantage of power vacuums in Iraq and Syria.  Iraq is an ally in the War on Terrorism.