News
Obama: We are not going let Iraq stand alone
In the midst of a re-election run, Obama is using the war’s end to both honor the military’s sacrifice and to remind the nation the unpopular war is ending on his watch. He is to deliver his war-is-over message in TV interviews on Tuesday and then again on Wednesday in remarks to troops at Fort Bragg, N.C.
Obama opposed the war from the start and eventually rode that stand to the White House.
In a 2002 speech during the months before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq began, when Obama was a U.S. senator from Illinois, he that “What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war.”
On Monday, speaking as a commander in chief, Obama put the focus on Iraq’s future.
“I think history will judge the original decision to go into Iraq,” Obama said. What’s clear, he added, is that because of the huge sacrifices by American soldiers and civilians and the courage of the Iraqi people, “we have now achieved an Iraq that is self-governing, that is inclusive and that has enormous potential.”
Said al-Maliki: “Anyone who observes the nature of the relationship between the two countries will say that the relationship will not end with the departure of the last American soldier.”
Early signs of how Iraq may orient itself could come from how it handles troubles in Syria, where the United Nations says 4,000 people have been killed in a government crackdown. The crisis has exposed differences in the U.S. and Iraqi positions: Obama says Syrian President Bashar Assad must step down. Al-Maliki has not.
“I do not have the right to ask a president to abdicate,” said al-Maliki. He suggested anew that Assad’s removal could lead to a civil war in Syria that could spread across the region and be difficult to control, calling for some other solution that would “avoid all the evils and the dangers.”
