America’s occupation of Iraq will end with the close of 2011, President Obama confirms

Amer­i­ca’s occu­pa­tion of Iraq will come to a close as orig­i­nal­ly promised, Pres­i­dent Oba­ma said at the White House on Fri­day, con­firm­ing that all Amer­i­can forces — with the excep­tion of a token force left to guard the U.S. Embassy in Bagh­dad — will be pulling out of Iraq by year’s end.

“Over the next two months, our troops in Iraq, tens of thou­sands of them, will pack up their gear and board con­voys for the jour­ney home,” the Pres­i­dent said.

The U.S. and Iraq had been nego­ti­at­ing to keep some Amer­i­can troops in Iraq into 2012 and pos­si­bly beyond, but the nego­ti­a­tions appar­ent­ly failed after the U.S. insist­ed on immu­ni­ty for its sol­diers — and the Iraqis refused to grant it.

Keep­ing U.S. forces in Iraq past the with­draw­al date would have been a very bad idea. We nev­er should have invad­ed Iraq in the first place, and our cost­ly occu­pa­tion has last­ed far too long. It is time for our troops to come home to safe­ty and to their fam­i­lies, and it is time for us to stop spend­ing bil­lions of dol­lars polic­ing anoth­er coun­try halfway around the world.

Accord­ing to the Nation­al Pri­or­i­ties Project, the occu­pa­tion of Iraq has cost U.S. tax­pay­ers $818,492,948,702 since 2003. That’s $818 bil­lion — with a b.

The cost to Wash­ing­ton tax­pay­ers alone is cur­rent­ly esti­mat­ed at $16,523,298,009.

If we had that $16 bil­lion avail­able to invest here in the Ever­green State, we could have avoid­ed dev­as­tat­ing cuts to vital pub­lic ser­vices fol­low­ing the onset of the Great Reces­sion. We would not have had to slash fund­ing for edu­ca­tion, health­care, or human ser­vices. We’d have been able to use what was left over to meet our infra­struc­ture needs, which are great. Sad­ly, that $16 bil­lion — our state’s share — was wast­ed over­seas rather than being invest­ed here at home.

“A com­plete draw­down from Iraq was the only move the Pres­i­dent could make, giv­en the Sta­tus of Forces Agree­ment nego­ti­at­ed by Pres­i­dent Bush, and the fact that insur­gents promised increased attacks on Amer­i­cans if we had stayed. We’re extreme­ly pleased that the Pres­i­dent will hon­or that agree­ment,” said Richard Allen Smith of VoteVets.org in a state­ment. (VoteVets was formed in 2006 to oppose the occu­pa­tion of Iraq; it is now Amer­i­ca’s largest net­work of pro­gres­sive veterans).