Meeting the challenge: US troops, like these Marines on a mission in Ramadi in 2004, have never been better at assymetrical urban warfare. (AP)
President Obama’s decision to withdraw all US troops from Iraq means that, after nearly nine years of one of our most divisive wars, which cost more than 4,000 American lives and hundreds of billions of dollars, all our forces will be coming home by year’s end.
The wisdom of the complete pullout will be hotly debated, but what’s not in question is the valor, skill and sheer decency of the American troops. No matter how the Middle East turns out, they should come home to a hero’s welcome — and the unconditional thanks of a grateful nation.
In the decade since 9/11, American fighting forces have distinguished themselves once more as the finest in the world. Operating under battlefield rules of engagement that would have hamstrung their World War II and Vietnam-era counterparts, their every action monitored by military lawyers, parsed by an ideologically hostile media and lampooned by Hollywood, they shattered an unscrupulous and ruthless foe who ignored the laws of war in pursuit of its murderous ideology.
They also developed and perfected a new kind of modern warfare, with new weapons, tactics and a whole new way of thinking about special forces. The massed tank battles of Desert Storm, which drove Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait in 1991, may well be the last the world ever sees.
In their place have come electronic warfare, drones, body armor and sniper rifles that can kill an enemy a mile and a half away. Special Forces — once the “tip of the spear” — have become the spear itself; it was the Navy SEALs and the crack helicopter unit, the 110th SOAR, who took out Osama bin Laden.
Our forces dispatched Saddam with ease and wrapped up the first phase of combat within weeks of the 2003 invasion. When the Bush administration made the near-fatal mistake of confusing the rout of Saddam with victory, they rallied through the fog of war and hung tough until the 2007 Surge finally brought the restive country under control.
A new generation of fighting generals, led by David Petraeus (now the head of the CIA) arose to displace the rear-echelon desk jockeys whose only experience of warfare was getting back and forth over the 14th Street Bridge in Washington every day.
Militarily, America has never been readier to stop the Islamic challenge of asymmetrical urban warfare.
In another era, the success of the US military against Islamic extremists would be celebrated. But the media that gave us war correspondent Ernie Pyle (killed in the Pacific theater in 1945 and buried next to the soldiers he covered) and a slew of movies like “Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo” (1944) and “Back to Bataan” (1945) has given way to a media that confuses skepticism with cynicism, and patriotism with jingoism. “America First” has devolved into “Blame America First.”
That’s not only a shame; it’s a disgrace. Our all-volunteer armed forces have distinguished themselves time and again in the face of relentless provocations and cowardly attacks.
In nearly civilian-free Fallujah, the mujahideen booby-trapped houses, cars and even corpses in order to kill American soldiers, and what did the media yip about? The 2004 death of an insurgent who was “playing possum,” hoping to get the drop on unsuspecting Marines.
But despite the animosity from the elites on the home front, especially in the runup to the 2004 election, our forces persisted. One of the reasons there has not been a successful al Qaeda operation in America — a lethal attack on the order of the 2008 Islamic terrorist assault on Bombay, directed from Pakistan — is that al Qaeda was destroyed as an effective fighting force in Iraq.
The myth of the invincible “holy warrior,” inspired and protected by Allah, died along with thousands of mostly non-Iraqi “insurgents” at the hands of the Marine Corps during the second battle of Fallujah in 2004. That triumph led to the Anbar Awakening, when Sunni sheiks turned decisively against the extremists — a key step toward victory over al Qaeda in Iraq.
It’s a bittersweet victory, to be sure. The Iraqis can’t wait to see us go, and there’s plenty of worry about what comes next there.
Yet nothing can diminish what our troops have achieved or tarnish what they have done — and only a lack of national will can stop them from doing it again when destiny calls.