As the soldiers of the 4th Stryker Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division crossed the border into Kuwait on Thursday morning, our combat mission in Iraq came to an end.
Sort of.
A full 50,000 combat-capable troops remain in place, magically recast as “advise and assist brigades.” Their mission — at least through the end of next year — is to continue to develop Iraq’s security forces.
But they can fight, if need be.
Still, the symbolism of this month’s “combat troop withdrawal” is important. The left insisted we’d only leave in disgrace. Some on the right expected “a cakewalk.” Instead, those troops exited an imperfect Iraq — but a country vastly more humane and hopeful than it was under the late Saddam Hussein.
We won. Now the question is whether the win will endure. So this official end of combat operations is a good time to search the books for strategic debits and credits.
In the “big win” column we can enter:
* There’s a major Arab democracy at last: Whether Baghdad’s politicians will overcome their rivalries or succumb to the region’s tragic genius for failure remains to be seen, but Iraqis have been given an opportunity unprecedented in the Middle East. So far, so good.
* A horrific dictator is gone: Contrary to the squeals of anti-Americans everywhere, Iraq’s immeasurably better off than it was when Saddam’s purges and invasions killed at least 1.5 million human beings, while tormenting millions more.
* Al Qaeda suffered a decisive strategic defeat: It’s true that al Qaeda wasn’t in Iraq under Saddam. But the terrorist multinational made the colossal error of declaring “occupied” Iraq its primary front.
When millions of Arab Muslims, appalled by al Qaeda’s savagery, flipped and fought against the terrorists, al Qaeda passed its high watermark. Islamist fanatics will continue to plague the world, but al Qaeda will never regain the broad support it enjoyed in 2001.
* Our military triumphed: Despite inept miscalculations by the Bush administration that cost them dearly, our troops never wavered. In the end, it was our men and women in uniform — not diplomats, politicians, aid workers or contractors — who turned a near-disaster into a win.
There are debits we have to enter into the ledger, though:
* Iraq wasn’t hard, but we made it hard: The Bush administration’s refusal to plan for an occupation, send enough troops early on, and take responsibility for what it had wrought, opened the door to insurgency and terror.
* We lost 4,406 troops KIA and over 30,000 wounded: In historical terms, the number of dead may be small, but each one mattered to a family plunged into grief. Most of those casualties lie at the feet of agenda-driven civilians who assumed they knew better than military officers and regional experts.
* Outside of Iraq, Arab democracy lost ground: After its admirable initial push for regional democracy, our government panicked as Iraq slid into turmoil. We returned to the slow-death policy of elevating stability above all else. From Syria to Libya, strong men who had been on their best behavior got out the lash again.
* Iraq’s remarkable progress still could collapse: Despite all of our (and Iraqi) sacrifices, Iraq’s democracy may yet fail. The big winner would be Iran.
If Iraq goes south now, primary blame will go to its own politicians. But secondary — and severe — blame will fall on President Obama. Our troops did their part. The all-out combat mission is over. Now Iraq needs energetic American diplomatic and political engagement to finish the job.
And Iraqis have begged us to help them. They’ve pleaded with this administration to stay in the ring and referee their pols. They desperately want us to keep some token troop presence beyond New Year’s Eve, 2011.
But President Obama has disengaged (despite bizarre recent attempts to take credit for Iraq’s success). Just when we need personal involvement at the highest levels to nudge Iraq’s leaders to form a legitimate government, our president has focused on naive campaign promises about Afghanistan and the sucker’s dream of Palestinian acceptance of Israel’s right to exist.
We’re so close . . . it would be unforgivable to fail for want of a little high-level attention to Baghdad.
Activists on the left would still like the vindication of failure in Iraq. We owe it to the troops who crossed that border yesterday, to the troops who remain in Iraq, and to those who came home with flags over their coffins to finish the job.
Ralph Peters’ latest book is “Endless War.”