With Combat to End in Iraq, What's Been Accomplished?

ANALYSIS

WASHINGTON (Aug. 2) -- President Barack Obama has signaled the beginning of the end of U.S. military involvement in Iraq, but it remains unlikely the formal close of combat operations this month and the start of the optimistically named Operation New Dawn will end debate over the controversial second front in the post-9/11 war.

"Our commitment in Iraq is changing -- from a military effort led by our troops to a civilian effort led by our diplomats," Obama told the Disabled American Veterans conference in Atlanta.

In a speech designed to shift attention, at least momentarily, from the bloody fighting in Afghanistan, he said Monday he was making good on his campaign pledge to bring the war in Iraq to "a responsible end" and said the military's combat mission there would end on Aug. 31 "as promised, on schedule."

The president reiterated his intention to remove all U.S. troops from Iraq by the end of 2011. But even as he ticked off the reductions under his watch -- more than 90,000 troops brought home, more than 2 million pieces of equipment moved out, hundreds of bases closed or turned over to Iraqi control -- Obama did not declare "mission accomplished."

"We will maintain a transitional force until we remove all our troops from Iraq by the end of next year. During this period, our forces will have a focused mission -- supporting and training Iraqi forces, partnering with Iraqis in counterterrorism missions, and protecting our civilian and military efforts," he said. "These are dangerous tasks. And there are still those with bombs and bullets who will try to stop Iraq's progress. The hard truth is we have not seen the end of American sacrifice in Iraq."

Obama went on to laud several service members among the more than 1 million Americans who have served in Iraq, "far more than any conflict since Vietnam." That was the only reference he made to a war whose aftermath scarred the American psyche in a speech that did not delve deeply into the seamier aspects of the Iraq conflict and its legacy.

Yet even as U.S. officials begin to paint a brighter image than the one experienced by some Iraqis themselves, observers said it is still unclear what has been accomplished beyond toppling Saddam Hussein's brutal regime.

Five months after Iraqis went to the polls, there still is no elected government in Baghdad. That has stoked fears that violence will fill the vacuum created when U.S. troops leave. Even before their departure, July was the deadliest month for Iraqis in more than two years. On Monday, eight people were killed in continuing violence that 665,000 Iraqi security forces appear unable to tamp down.

White House spokesman Bill Burton downplayed the significance of the political impasse in Baghdad while talking to reporters traveling with the president. "It's important to focus on the real successes the Iraqi people have had in democracy," he said. "The fact that there's a stable, transitional government in place now is a sign that the process is working."

Other things, however, are not. Take the power grid. A lack of electricity was cited by Iraqis as one of their most important concerns in the waning days of the Bush administration. It remains a huge problem, a stifling reminder in the triple-digit desert heat that Iraq's government still cannot provide the most basic services to its people.

Among opponents as well as early supporters of the war, the results have been lacking.

"More than seven years later, the Iraq war is a net negative for U.S. national security, and America is still trying to take a sad song and make it better," said Brian Katulis, a national security expert at the liberal Center for American Progress and co-author of a recent report tabulating the human, financial and strategic costs of the war. "The costs exceed the benefits."

Kenneth Pollack, director of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, was one of the leading advocates for invading Iraq. He said it is too soon to tell whether U.S. involvement has resulted in a safer Middle East or will lead to more instability.

"Iraq is hardly out of the woods," he told AOL News.

While Iraq is more stable and secure today than it was in 2006, before the troop surge quelled the insurgency there, "that clearly rests to some extent on the continuing presence of American forces as peacekeepers," Pollack said. "We simply do not know if Iraq is ready to stand on its own without them, and there is considerable evidence to indicate that it isn't."

Patrick Lang, a veteran of the first Gulf War who headed military intelligence in the Middle East and South Asia, is among several commentators who see Iran as the biggest winner in President George W. Bush's 2003 invasion of Iraq.

"Seven years have produced what?" Lang asked. "A Shiite-dominated, Iranian-influenced government that cannot even agree on a new prime minister. What have we gained in exchange for the blood of our soldiers and a vast treasure? In my opinion, very little."

But Daniel Serwer, an expert at the U.S. Institute of Peace who directed the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, took a more nuanced view.

"Iraq today is no model democracy. It is struggling to form a government that accurately reflects the fragmented results of its March elections," he said. "But it is also one of the few places in the Middle East where voters have real choices at the polls, and where people are generally free to speak their minds.

"Provided the security situation holds, it is not difficult to picture an Iraq that is self-reliant, prosperous, relatively free and friendly to the U.S. That would be progress, especially if measured from the most chaotic and insecure days of the occupation."