They came. They saw. They lost. .Americans
Thursday witnessed the withdrawal of the last US occupation combat brigade from Iraq. Although US military restricted journalists from reporting the movement of the brigade until it crossed the borders with the Kuwait, reporters said the troops expressed their relief at leaving the occupied country. Reporters also said the soldiers cried from Kuwait: "We won, we won".
But many commentators look at these "victory cries" as a mockery by itself. Robert Fisk wrote in the daily The Independent an article titled by: "US troops say goodbye to Iraq" with a subtitle: " Torture. Corruption. Civil war. America has certainly left its mark".
In this article Fisk criticized these cries as "infantile cries from teenage soldiers. "
"We should not be taken in by the tomfoolery on the Kuwaiti border in the last few hours, the departure of the last "combat" troops from Iraq two weeks ahead of schedule. Nor by the infantile cries of "We won" from teenage soldiers, some of whom must have been 12-years-old when George W Bush sent his army off on this catastrophic Iraqi adventure."
He undervalued this "victory" adding that the risk is still existing: "They are leaving behind 50,000 men and women â a third of the entire US occupation force â who will be attacked and who will still have to fight against the insurgency."
"They will still be in occupation â for surely one of the "American interests" they must defend is their own presence â along with the thousands of armed and indisciplined mercenaries, western and eastern, who are shooting their way around Iraq to safeguard our precious western diplomats and businessmen. So say it out loud: we are not leaving."
On other hand, Robert Fisk in this article believes that the occupation soldiers had brought plague to this Arab country.
"Instead, the millions of American soldiers who have passed through Iraq have brought the Iraqis a plague."
"They brought the disease of civil war. They injected Iraq with corruption on a grand scale. They stamped the seal of torture on Abu Ghraib â a worthy successor to the same prison under Saddam's vile rule â after stamping the seal of torture on Bagram and the black prisons of Afghanistan. They sectarianized a country that, for all its Saddamite brutality and corruption, had hitherto held its Sunnis and Shias together," he added.
"They came. They saw. They lost. And now they say they've won," Robert Fisk said.
all gimmicks...
typical American arrogance stating they won the Iraq War, their withdrawal is just a way of cutting some losses after realizing the "small" mistake they made in Iraq. They killed Saddam but where's the WMD?
It was only this year that they realized how stupid they were in occupying Iraq and after so many American and Iraqi lives were lost in their so-called Iraqi Freedom.
Lets pray for UNITED and PEACEFUL IRAQ now...
The SOFA cannot be trusted.The US is leaving behind 50,000 soldiers.Some iraqi politicians are saying 2011 is early for an exit,this will give the iraqi resistance the will power and desire to continue killing and attacking those remaining American soldiers.
As per the BBC (the best news channel in the whole wide world)- "There is indignation and anger here about the American soldier who shouted: "We've won. It's over. We brought democracy to Iraq!""
One soldier shouted this..
"The State of Forces Agreement states that US troops are not allowed to mount combat operations unless they are asked to by the Iraqi authorities. But they can act, and reportedly already have acted, unilaterally by killing suspected insurgents. They justify this by saying they are protecting their troops.
And it is possible - probable, even - the December 2011 deadline will be re-negotiated. Commanders on both sides have said Iraq will not be ready."
This story is not ended yet !
Nobody really wins a war. It is just a matter of who loses the least/most.
Maybe they lost the keys to the C130 and that's why they couldn't leave ;o)
How did they lose? Were they defeated? Were they expelled by either a military force or by the host government asking them to leave? No.
The mission was never clearly defined, but for those who believe that the war was to remove Saddam Hussein from power and to empower Iraqi forces to govern their own country, it is easy to believe that mission was accomplished.
Lets hope some good comes out of it..so much carnage and loss of lives, livelihoods and youth can't be in vain,can it?Allahu'alim..
at war nobody is so called 'winner'....lots of innocent life wasted>> :( a traumatic experience by woman and children leaving a very deep scars into their hearts and souls.
Put govt policy aside. These soldiers, most of them teenagers, are only doing a job they are told to do. And right or wrong, some of them paid the ultimate sacrifice with their lives.
When a Dictator leaves, anarchy rules.. Look at Yugoslavia..
"In this article Fisk criticized these cries as "infantile cries from teenage soldiers. "" Actually, this is normal for any army leaving and sadly most of the soldiers are teens who faced combat for the first time..