At year’s end, wars still go on

Associated Press

WASHINGTON

Taking America off a permanent war footing is proving harder than President Barack Obama may have suggested.

U.S. troops are back in Iraq, the endgame in Afghanistan is requiring more troops — and perhaps more risks — than once expected, and Obama is saddled with a worsening, high-stakes conflict in Syria.

Last spring, Obama described to newly minted Army officers at West Point how “the landscape has changed” after a decade of war. He cited then-dwindling conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. And he said Osama bin Laden, whose plotting from an al-Qaida sanctuary in Afghanistan gave rise to what became America’s longest war, “is no more.”

“You are the first class to graduate since 9/11 who may not be sent into combat in Iraq or Afghanistan,” Obama declared to a burst of applause.

But once again, the landscape has changed.

Once again, the U.S. is engaged in combat in Iraq — not by soldiers on the ground but by pilots in the sky. And the Pentagon is putting “boots on the ground” to retrain and advise Iraqi soldiers how to fight a new menace: the Islamic State militants who emerged from the Iraq insurgency that U.S. troops fought from 2003 to 2011.

Once again, there are worsening crises demanding U.S. military intervention, including in Syria. Four months after his speech at the U.S. Military Academy, Obama authorized American pilots, joined by Arab allies, to begin bombing Islamic State targets with the aim of undermining the group’s base and weakening its grip in Iraq.

And once again, the U.S. is on a path that could expand or prolong its military role in Afghanistan. The U.S. combat role there ends today, but Obama has authorized remaining U.S. troops to attack the Taliban if they pose a threat to U.S. military personnel who are training Afghan security forces for at least the next two years.

At his final news conference of 2014, Obama spoke just 18 words on Afghanistan, saying, “In less than two weeks, after more than 13 years, our combat mission in Afghanistan will be over.”

As of Dec. 16, a total of 2,215 U.S. troops had died in Afghanistan and 19,945 had been wounded. In Iraq, 4,491 died and 32,244 wounded.

Shortly before the invasion of Iraq in 2003, Obama, then an Illinois state senator, called it a “dumb war.” He warned of unforeseen costs and consequences, arguing that President George W. Bush would be smarter to finish what he started in Afghanistan.

Obama’s promise to end the war in Iraq was a key to winning the White House in 2008. He delivered on that promise, but the war was not really over. Events conspired to pull Obama back in. In January 2014 the Islamic State group seized the Sunni city of Fallujah, scene of the bloodiest fighting of the U.S. war a decade earlier.

In June, the militants expanded their offensive, sweeping across much of northern Iraq and capturing key cities, including Mosul. Whole divisions of the Iraqi army folded, abandoning tanks and other American-supplied war equipment. That was not just a boon to the militants. It was a blow to U.S. prestige.

Suddenly, inexplicably, Baghdad seemed within the Islamic State group’s reach.

Two months later, Obama gave the go-ahead for U.S. airstrikes in Iraq.