The End Of A War That Shouldn't Have Happened

President Obama’s announcement last week that U.S. troops would leave Iraq by the end of the year is bittersweet when considering how pointless the war was in the first place. Leonard Pitts Jr. writes in his new column, “Mixed Emotions As The U.S. Leaves Iraq”:

The things we were told on the route to war turned out to be untrue.

What is true is that we fought a war we did not have to fight. It cost at least $806 billion and more than 36,000 American casualties, including 4,400 fatalities.

So there are mixed emotions at last week’s news that President Obama has decided to withdraw virtually all U.S. service personnel from Iraq. There is elation, of course, thankfulness that American servicemen and women will be home in time for the holidays.

But a patina of bitter shades the sweet and it is bound up in the fact that: They are coming home from a place they never should have been.