Most of the 2,500 American troops in Iraq will stay there, their mission largely unchanged—few, apart from special forces, have seen real action in the past year anyway
WHEN THE first American bombs began falling on Iraq on March 19th 2003, President George W. Bush predicted a hard slog. “A campaign on the harsh terrain of a nation as large as California could be longer and more difficult than some predict,” he warned. “And helping Iraqis achieve a united, stable and free country will require our sustained commitment.” Yet even he might not have imagined that American combat soldiers would remain in Iraq 18 years later, fathers and sons serving in the same war.
In fact, America is not really leaving. Mr Biden, mindful of the Iraqi government’s near-collapse in 2014, says that Americans will continue to train and advise Iraqi troops, and “to deal with ISIS as it arises”. Most of the 2,500 American troops in Iraq will thus stay there, their mission largely unchanged—few, apart from special forces, have seen real action in the past year anyway.
“There's a working hypothesis that after 20 years of counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency, in Afghanistan and Iraq, that we're probably over-invested in the Middle East,” says Michèle Flournoy, a former Pentagon official and once a leading candidate to be Mr Biden’s defence secretary. “Despite discussions of prioritising the Asia-Pacific, we haven't actually shifted all that much of our weight in that direction,” she adds.
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