by VIJAY PRASHAD
The American occupation troops withdraw from Iraq after waging a dumb war which claimed the lives of a million Iraqis.
ON December 16, the United States armed forces handed over Camp Adder to the Iraqi government. It was the last base to be officially handed over, as the troops boarded their trucks for the convoy ride to Kuwait. “We have turned the last page of the occupation,” Hussein al-Asadi told the assembled crowd at the base. Al-Asadi represented Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who had spent some time with President Barack Obama earlier in the week and received assurances that the U.S. would remain engaged with Iraq. Several thousand U.S. forces are garrisoned in Iraq even after the withdrawal, and the U.S. will continue to maintain its sprawling embassy compound in Baghdad. The bases in general have come to resemble ghost towns, with plans for the construction of a luxury hotel being executed inside the former Green Zone.
Sections of the country that saw the greatest resistance to the U.S. occupation remained unbending. In Fallujah, a thousand protesters burned American flags, and in Sadr City, protests welcomed the withdrawal of the U.S. troops. “The Americans are leaving behind them a destroyed country. The Americans did not leave modern schools or big factories behind them,” said Mariam Khazim. “They left thousands of widows and orphans.”
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