Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Victorious Iraq Resistance Fighters To US : 'Get Out'

So here we are almost eight years after the illegal War On Iraq began and the Iraqi government wants to make sure the United States under Obama will stick to its deal :

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki ruled out the presence of any U.S. troops in Iraq after the end of 2011, saying his new government and the country's security forces were capable of confronting any remaining threats to Iraq's security, sovereignty and unity.

A majority of Iraqis—and some Iraqi and U.S. officials—have assumed the U.S. troop presence would eventually be extended, especially after the long government limbo. But Mr. Maliki was eager to draw a line in his most definitive remarks on the subject. "The last American soldier will leave Iraq" as agreed, he said, speaking at his office in a leafy section of Baghdad's protected Green Zone.
And the man who helped deliver Maliki his new power to turf out US troops, if it is decided they will try and stay beyond 2011, is the very same man the Bush administration spent years trying to destroy :
"This agreement is not subject to extension, not subject to alteration. It is sealed." Mr. Maliki's new majority depends partly on followers of anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.
And the Iraqi resistance fighters, known in the Western media as terrorists and insurgents, are
now a solid part of the Maliki government's power base :
"The militias are now part of the government and have entered the political process," said Mr. Maliki. The Sadr contingent, he added, "is moving in a satisfactory direction of taking part in the government, renouncing violence and abandoning military activity, and that's why we welcome it."
And :

(Maliki) said full withdrawal of U.S. troops also will remove a prime motivator of insurgents—both the Shiite fighters tied to militia groups and Iran, and Sunnis linked to Mr. Hussein's ousted Baath party.

The Full Story Is Here

Iraqis resisted, primarily, United States and British forces for seven years, and it's hard not see that their resistance, in the end, resulted in a victory, voices in the government, real government power, the kind of victory President Bush promised would never be allowed to happen.

In the end, Iraq's resistance fighters beat back and beat down the most powerful military in the world, ground them down in fact, until the United States were forced to pay them tens of millions of dollars not to kill American soldiers, until the United States stepped back and allowed them to have a say in the democratic future of their country.

That, of course, is the truth of the end of the War On Iraq.

The United States lost.

Iraqis won.

The resistance, as brutal, deadly, inhuman as it was, worked.