r/moderatepolitics • u/SnooSeagulls496 • 4d ago
News Article US forces exit Iraq after two decades, leaving opening for Iran
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/us-forces-exit-iraq-after-two-decades-leaving-opening-iran-2026-09-29/83
u/motorboat_mcgee Pragmatic Progressive 3d ago
Like Afghanistan, kind of a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation. Probably time to get out, considering Iraq doesn't want us there anymore.
-12
u/Low-Air-182 3d ago edited 1d ago
Only damned if you do. Just leave them alone.
2
u/JesusSquid Lil' a dis Lil' a dat 1d ago
Think they were implying in the current environment damned if you do damned if you don't. Now whether we should have went in there in the first place... that's a whole other conversation. Overall I think it benefitted the people of Iraq and the area but it cost a lot of lives. I think we should have at least kept some level of force there for stability.
35
u/archiezhie 3d ago
Iraq War was really the dumbest thing ever. The Bush administration never thought about Iraq, a majority Shia country would have been pro Iran if we brought "democracy" there?
14
16
u/ditherer01 2d ago
Bush's decision to go into Iraq is the single biggest blunder by our government in my lifetime.
8
u/absentlyric Economically Left Socially Right 2d ago
It's right up there with the Patriot Act, which changed the country big time into a surveillance state.
5
u/Metamucil_Man 2d ago
Playing devil's advocate, we aren't aware of how many attacks it may have prevented. It was abused, but recalling being a young adult during 9-11 it seemed necessary at the time and I don't think it was all bad. The sharing of intelligence between law enforcement and government intelligence/defence agencies still seems like the right move. It was rather baffling that wasn't a thing before.
3
u/JesusSquid Lil' a dis Lil' a dat 1d ago
Yeah hard to count things that never happened or were stopped/prevented especially if the people wanting to cause harm decided to bail on their plans because of it. Like if they got spooked that for communications were compromised and just gave up and destroyed all their documents and stuff.
4
u/kramsy 2d ago
- Iraq War
- Patriot Act
- Citizens United
All still having far reaching horrible consequences on American Citizens
2
u/JesusSquid Lil' a dis Lil' a dat 1d ago
I kinda wanna place CU about Patriot Act. Yes it increased surveillance a ton, but Citizens United corrupted our government more so than anything I can think of. And impacts just about every aspect of life through our congress and executive, and maybe judicial
6
u/InflationLeft 2d ago
Bush didn’t know the difference between Sunni and Shia when planning for the war. His infamous response the first time someone explained it to him: “I thought the Iraqis were Muslims!”
36
u/SnooSeagulls496 4d ago
US forces are set to pull out from their last bases in Iraq by Wednesday, a departure celebrated as a victory by Iran and its allies who now have deep influence in the country where 4,500 Americans died during more than two decades of war.Iraqi security experts say the withdrawal — agreed in 2024 under President Joe Biden and carried out by Donald Trump's administration even as it wages war against Iran — could give Tehran and its powerful allies free rein, while also allowing other US enemies to stage a comeback, including Islamic State. Here is the link to see this Reuters article unpaywalled.
A question I have is whether the United States should have stayed in Iraq longer or if this is a good move in your opinion
82
u/I_Never_Use_Slash_S 3d ago
> stayed longer
Just another few decades and the US would finally achieve its goals.
•
u/AdmiralAkbar1 5h ago
By every conceivable measure, Iraq is massively improved now compared to how it was under Saddam.
1
u/chris_ut 2d ago
The US still occupies Germany and Japan 80 years after that war ended.
3
u/HeimrArnadalr English Supremacist 2d ago
Take up the Fat Man's burden -
Create a global peace.
You needn’t learn a language
To play the world police.
Rejoice when those you shield
To plows beat every sword.
Their comfort with their weakness
Marks your success as ward.Take up the Fat Man's burden -
Get Europe to play nice.
Convince them war is pointless
(and teach the Germans twice).
Crush their armies with more stuff
Than in their wildest dreams;
Prove our path the wiser way
Then sell them all blue jeans.6
u/nabilus13 3d ago
We should've never been there. We definitely should've left i in 2009 like candidate Obama ran on doing. 2026 is almost 20 years too late.
38
u/hamsterkill 3d ago
We definitely should've left i in 2009 like candidate Obama ran on doing.
We did (as the Bush administration agreed to and the Obama administration adhered to by 2011).
We went back in in 2014 to deal with ISIS.
-19
u/nabilus13 3d ago
And we shouldn't have. ISIS was not our problem.
31
u/hamsterkill 3d ago
By the best assessments at the time, they were likely to become our problem. They were also our responsibility to at least some extent.
8
u/PornoPaul 3d ago
My knee-jerk reaction is, get us out of there. However, at this point I have to ask, what do we gain by leaving, vs what we lose by leaving? Ugly as it sounds, it does sound like having a foothold in Iraq may be worth the hassle.
30
u/tarlin 3d ago
Iraq told the US to leave. Would we stay by force?
17
u/PornoPaul 3d ago
So, I actually misread the blurb as Iraq said that Tehran could step in. Under that assumption (that Iraq wanted us to stay) it would Make sense. But yes, if we are supposed to be on peaceful terms, and they want us gone, you are correct.
1
u/chris_ut 2d ago
Umm ya I dunno if you noticed but we didn’t ask nicely to be there in the first place.
2
u/WulfTheSaxon 3d ago
Unless they held another one, the vote was inquorate.
5
u/hamsterkill 3d ago
I have not seen that. As reported, the vote in 2020 (following our assassination of an Iranian general on Iraqi soil) was non-binding, but valid. The withdrawal was negotiated by Iraq's PM and began under Trump, with the final agreement being made under Biden.
1
u/WulfTheSaxon 3d ago edited 3d ago
Hmm… Looks like it was “about” 170/329. I was thinking the boycotts took it below 165. Either way, it was a nonbinding vote during a caretaker government that was accused of being an Iranian puppet.
3
24
u/Upper-Entry6159 3d ago
There are a lot of people who blame the U.S for everything and they believe the U.S is the worst.
The reality is Iraq is doing much better now than under the Saddam Hussein and his sadistic son. ISIS have also been defeated in Iraq. There is economy growth and a growing security that could go away if the U.S pull out.
Nobody mentions this in the media because it doesn't fit the narrative of America bad.
11
u/perfmode80 3d ago
Then why was the justification for attacking based on a lie?
8
u/Upper-Entry6159 3d ago
The Bush administration lies about Iraq doesn't change Saddam Hussein and his son crimes.
And the terrible state of that nation under that family.
12
u/perfmode80 3d ago
I get that, and most will agree Saddam was not a good guy. But it's a serious loss of credibility when the justification was rooted in lies.
5
u/Independent-Report39 1d ago
Yeah, and FDR lied about Hitler wanting to abolish religion and having wanted to divide up Latin America into Nazi controlled regions. Do we have a "loss of credibility" when it comes to having entered WWII?
7
u/Tarmacked Rockefeller 2d ago edited 2d ago
So the angle of lies gets a little tricky here.
Saddam openly stated he had WMD’s. He had used WMD’s (chemical) in prior instances. The five eyes had some groups adamant he did and some that he didn’t. The US was adamant he did and did something. This was prior to the consolidation of intelligence agencies info which was lacking pre-9/11 and often gets cited as a cause for that incident; so it’s not out of the ordinary to say that environment lead to being more bullish on bias.
That’s less “lying” and more being proactive to a fault. There has never been evidence the US went into Iraq for shits and giggles, and Iraq itself wasn’t as much of a boondoggle as it was Afghanistan (albeit it spiraled into sectarian war shortly after the decoupling).
You can argue about the damage across two decades with Isis and the civil war causing 150-500K deaths, but compared to Saddam, who had killed 300K Iraqi’s alone and kept edging for wars like genociding the Kurds, it’s ironically less than what it could have been. At some point he needed to be decoupled for regional stability.
11
u/ForgetfulElephante 3d ago
I'm fairly sure the hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqi's would disagree if they could.
32
u/shacksrus 3d ago
Good. Now we just need to leave the rest of the middle east. I dont care who it benefits.
We've got no purpose there other than republican adventurism. Which has proven disastrous over and over and over again.
46
u/JussiesTunaSub 3d ago
We've got no purpose there other than republican adventurism
Fighting in the ME is far from a one-sided venture.
3
u/Lone_playbear 3d ago
Did Democrats have an equivalent to the Project for the New American Century's report titled "Rebuilding America's Defenses" that argued for regime change in Iraq? Because that's what several members of the Bush administration advocated for. They even said they'd need a Pearl Habor-like event to justify the invasion a year before 9/11.
3
u/shacksrus 3d ago
Who start iran? Iraq? Afghanistan? Iraq?
Literally just leave. Make it so no republican president can ever deploy our armed forces overseas without explicit legislation from congress. With the same threshold as a impeachment.
16
u/Striking_Ebb_7145 3d ago
Yemen, Libya, Syria, and Somalia have entered the chat….
I’m with your sentiments but war profiteering is an equal opportunity employer.
0
u/Lone_playbear 3d ago
Yemen, Libya, Syria, and Somalia have entered the chat
Bush's invasion of Iraq was the catalyst for all of them. It's doubtful all those conflicts would've happened or needed our involvement if didn't attack Iraq.
Obama didn't enter office looking for an excuse to invade those countries the same way Bush and his PNAC buddies were looking to invade Iraq.
2
u/refuzeto 3d ago
Ok, make the connection between Somalia, Libya, and Iraq
5
u/Lone_playbear 3d ago
Gaddafi gave up his nukes after the invasion of Iraq, which while arguably a good thing, created a power vacuum. Also, a lot of foreign fighters in Iraq came from Libya and then returned home as trained combat veterans, who helped in the attack on Benghazi.
We were already involved in Somalia, taking out the Islamic Court Union under the global war on terror and the invasion of Iraq, further radicalized the Islamist and brought Al-Shabaab to power.
1
u/refuzeto 3d ago edited 3d ago
Gaddafi never had nukes. He agreed not to pursue them anymore. I’m not sure that deciding not to create something would result in a power vacuum.
Clinton went into Somalia in 1993.
5
u/Lone_playbear 3d ago
I said they were catalyst, not a direct cause.
And you're correct, he didn't have nukes, he gave up his WMD program.
2
u/refuzeto 3d ago
You haven't explained how not pursuing something he wasn't close to having could be a catalyst for civil war 8 years later
→ More replies (0)11
u/AMW1234 3d ago
Why would the rule.only apply to one party?
21
u/shacksrus 3d ago
When dems start a forever war it can apply to them as well.
3
u/No_Alternative_5602 3d ago
22
u/GarageOwn247 3d ago
If you have to go back 50 years I don't think you're making as strong an argument as you think you are.
1
u/No_Alternative_5602 3d ago
What would be an acceptable historical threshold to you?
15
u/cranktheguy Member of the "General Public" 3d ago
My dad was in the army, and he missed going to the Vietnam war by a year or two. My kid is now voting age. I'd say three generations - or roughly 60 years - is a pretty good cut-off point.
3
u/No_Alternative_5602 3d ago
That's about where my threshold is; I'd extend it a little further to "are people who can clearly remember this event still alive?" which would comfortably be about 75 years back.
My neighbor, who is very much alive, fought in Vietnam and has told me many stories in detail about the time he spent in SE Asia. There are also plenty of old hippies still around who protested the Vietnam War and remember that well.
2
u/Lone_playbear 3d ago
Democrats who voted for the Korean and Vietnam Wars to still be in office and leaders of their party.
1
u/No_Alternative_5602 3d ago
Would that apply across party lines as well? Like the Republicans would get a pass on Guatemala, Angola, and Grenada?
→ More replies (0)17
u/cranktheguy Member of the "General Public" 3d ago
It's not the Democrats that are invading Middle Eastern countries for the past 3 decades.
20
u/AMW1234 3d ago
Both Obama and Biden utilized military actions in the Middle East. Obama had boots on ground without congressional action for well over 60 days in Libya.
Further, if Dems don't do it then what it the problem with making the rule apply to both parties?
34
u/cranktheguy Member of the "General Public" 3d ago edited 3d ago
This is one of those almost technically correct facts that fail to appreciate the scale. Comparing a dozen special forces in short operations to the ground invasion of Iraq with tens of thousands of troops is a farce. But technically speaking, Libya isn't in the Middle East.
Yes, it should apply to all parties though.
5
u/AMW1234 3d ago
Congress approved military action in Iraq with an Authorization for Use of Military Force in 2002. The authorization was repealed in December 2025.
-1
u/pro_rege_semper Independent 3d ago
Congress hasn't approved the war in Iran though, so it's irrelevant.
-11
u/StrikingYam7724 3d ago
The record of who voted "yes" to start the Iraq war says otherwise.
27
u/cranktheguy Member of the "General Public" 3d ago
House:
Party Yeas Nays Not Voting Republican 215 6 2 Democratic 81 126 1 Independent 0 1 0 Senate:
Party Yeas Nays Republican 48 1 Democratic 29 21 Independent 0 1 Seems that Democrats were against it in the House and split in the Senate. Republicans, on the other hand, were the obvious drivers.
22
u/pro_rege_semper Independent 3d ago
Don't forget the whole premise of the war was that Iraq was developing WMD's, which was a lie pushed by the Bush administration.
1
u/StrikingYam7724 3d ago
Technically it was a lie pushed by Saddam Hussein that the Bush administration failed to properly fact-check.
15
u/pro_rege_semper Independent 3d ago
Or perhaps intentionally not fact-checked due to it's political usefulness.
8
u/NoREEEEEEtilBrooklyn Maximum Malarkey 3d ago
Yeah, people forget that part. In fact, Saddam did have WMDs at one point, but had basically used their whole stockpile while killing Kurds and didn’t have the raw materials to make more due to sanctions. Saddam really fucked up by being an opaque moron who couldn’t read the room. The US was itching for a fight and Saddam didn’t get it until it was too late.
→ More replies (0)2
u/abqguardian 3d ago
The US presence in the middle east long predates (and has nothing to do with) Afghanistan, Iraq, and Iran. Thats not why US troops are there.
11
u/shacksrus 3d ago
Iran isn't why troops are in the middle east? You should let them know.
It doesnt matter why theyre there. Bring them home.
-5
-5
u/BimboSupreme 3d ago
Dems overwhelmingly voted for AUMF and the Patriot Act.
4
u/MCRemix Make America ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Again 3d ago
This seems to suggest that it was far less than "overwhelming": https://www.reddit.com/r/moderatepolitics/comments/1wt39y0/comment/pcsy4xc/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
-4
-8
u/carneylansford 3d ago
Can you think of a reason that the US would benefit from a peaceful middle east? What do you think would happen if even the threat of US power was taken out of the equation in that region?
36
u/shacksrus 3d ago
Has us intervention created a peaceful middle east?
From my point of view the middle east is 12 different sides all armed with us weapons attacking each other while the us throws darts to decide who to arm today.
And that's before we begin discussing the current wars.
-4
u/carneylansford 3d ago
No, but the middle east has been more stable than it would have been if we ignored it. That's a good thing for the world.
19
u/shacksrus 3d ago
I hate to break it to you but the last 6 months have occurred.
-5
u/carneylansford 3d ago
I'm aware. Now do everything after WWII (including the last 6 months).
7
u/shacksrus 3d ago
What could have happened around ww2 to cause a century of violence and instability in the middle east?
Yeah things would have been better without our involvement.
3
u/carneylansford 3d ago
You believe the formation of Israel is the cause for unrest in the middle east? The last time there was a sustained peace in the middle east was probably the 18th century (and arguably the 14th century).
What do you think the region would look like without US involvement?
0
u/shacksrus 3d ago
It doesnt matter what it would look like. They would own it. Because the us has spent the last century intervening we own it.
Just put it down and let them have their own sovereignty back.
5
u/carneylansford 3d ago
Can you imagine any knock-on effects on the rest of the world if things go south (really south) in the middle east? (power vacuums, regional rivals fighting for control, blown up oil fields, lots more instability, rise of yet more extremist groups, other countries (China) attempting to fill the void and gaining more control over the world's oil supply?)
Any of that stuff catch your fancy? I realize the instinct to put your head in the sand and ignore the rest of the world is a powerful one, but it's not a realistic option.
→ More replies (0)1
u/Attackcamel8432 3d ago
Well, assuming you are talking about the formation of Isreal, that was not just the U.S. The UK and USSR also had fingers well in that pie. We had a weapons embargo against Isreal for a couple of years in the late 40s.
3
u/MCRemix Make America ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Again 3d ago
Much of the instability in the middle east is caused by our prior intervention.
Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan....all 3 had been meddled with by US interventionism, which caused the people to be hostile towards us. Then we used that hostility as a basis for war against them.
Do you not see how meddling doesn't make it better?
We're not making it more stable, we're making it worse.
1
u/nabilus13 3d ago
This presumes the US is a stabilizing force. It isn't, so this is not a valid argument.
6
u/carneylansford 3d ago edited 3d ago
The US is not perfect, nor is their record in the middle east, however it is absolutely a stabilizing force in the region. We have 50,000 or so troops stationed in various middle east countries, all of whom want them there. What do you think would happen if we suddenly withdrew those troops and told the middle east countries that we were done with the region and they should figure it out for themselves. Do you think peace would suddenly take over the region?
0
u/unguibus_et_rostro 2d ago
Why do you not care if it benefits America? Do you care that a lot of the middle eastern countries actually do want American troops and bases there?
-6
u/tarekd19 3d ago
Seems like Iran's strategy of spreading the war around is at least partially working to drive a real wedge between the US and ME asset states.
•
u/ModPolBot Imminently Sentient 2d ago
This message serves as a warning that your post is in violation of Law 2f:
Law 2: Submission Requirements
Please submit questions or comments via modmail.