Editorial
US troops withdrawal from Iraq
Obama keeps his word
US President Barack Obama has begun to live up to the expectations of the peace loving people around the world. He has declared that the US will end all combat operations in Iraq through withdrawing two-thirds of the US forces deployed in the war-ravaged country by August 2010. The declaration amounts to offloading the legal and moral burden associated with the Iraq war, which he inherited while stepping into the White House.
This is more than just calling back home the American troops in Iraq who are clearly overstaying in the country that they invaded in violation of all international laws and norms, in the first place. The presence of American troops undermines sovereignty of Iraq as an independent nation, let alone the democracy that former president Bush tried to impose on the sharply divided country.
The Americans have been criticized heavily for the way they captured Iraq and tried to mould its political system according to their own plans and needs. Their success remained confined to toppling Saddam Hussein's much-maligned regime and installing a government of their choice. But the price that the people of Iraq have paid for the US invasion is too great to be outweighed by the United States' own, highly subjective, assessment of success in their mission. Indeed, it has been a humanitarian disaster of great magnitude which cancelled out all that the Bush administration was saying to defend the US action.
President Obama is also going to undo the blatant lies which were the basis of President Bush's extremely outlandish plan of attacking Iraq with most sophisticated war machines. The fictitious WMD story, concocted to give Iraq an ominous look, will be dispatched to history once the American troops withdraw from the country.
The most encouraging signal coming from President Obama's declaration is that a positive shift is likely to take place in the US approach to the Middle East. We believe the US President has taken the path that his predecessors had shunned much to the consternation of all the countries concerned except Israel. It may really help overturn the historical injustice done to the people of Palestine.
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