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In Iraq, Biden Says Tide of Conflict Is Receding
By MARK LANDLER
Published: December 1, 2011
CAMP VICTORY, Iraq — As the United States prepared to turn over this optimistically named military base to Iraq, leaders of both countries held a solemn commemoration here on Thursday of the sacrifices of American and Iraqi troops during eight years of war, marking the moment in a garish marble palace built by Saddam Hussein.
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With verses from the Koran and the words of President Harry S. Truman, Iraq’s top officials and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. paid tribute to each other’s soldiers, pledged friendship, and celebrated an orderly departure by the United States that many in both countries would not have predicted even a few years ago.
“The tide of war is receding, and the soul of Baghdad remains, the soul of Iraq remains,” Mr. Biden said to an audience of about 300 American and Iraqi troops. Citing Truman’s speech after Germany surrendered in World War II in 1945, he said the end of war was a “solemn but glorious hour.”
In a day of hopeful statements that tried to cast the war in its most positive light, Iraq’s president, Jalal Talabani, said that in moving beyond dictatorship Iraq served as a beacon for the political upheavals of the Arab Spring.
“History will record that the liberation of our country was not only an important turning point in Iraq itself,” he said, “but it was an important beginning for the region.”
The ceremony on Thursday was not, strictly speaking, a handover. The war — which has been winding down in phases with a drawdown of troops that started in 2009 — will not end definitively until the last American soldier leaves Iraqi soil in the next few weeks.
Still, the ceremony was freighted with the symbolism of a foreign power’s leaving, and an occupied country’s reclaiming its sovereignty. Iraq’s red-white-and-black flags were hung from balconies, unfurling grandly as a military band played the Iraqi national anthem. An Iraqi honor guard, in crimson uniforms, lined the entrance to the palace, which was festooned with yellow and red tinsel, strung on barbed wire.
Mr. Talabani, who bestowed medals on Mr. Biden; the American military commander, Gen. Lloyd Austin III; and ambassadors from other countries that contributed troops to the coalition, pledged that Iraq would remain a friend of the United States.
The vice president, as he has throughout his visit, portrayed the withdrawal as evidence that the United States keeps its promises. American soldiers, he said peering at those present in the audience, were leaving Iraq, “taking nothing with you but your experience.”
“Because of you,” he said, “and because of the work you have done, we are now able to end this war.”
Mr. Biden also addressed the criticisms, leveled by Senator John McCain of Arizona and other critics, that the United States was abandoning Iraq to a potentially dangerous fate. He talked of the progress he had seen from his earliest trips here, when, he said, bodies piled up daily in Baghdad’s morgue and driving on its highways, riddled with bombs, was a test of faith.
Now, Mr. Biden insisted, Iraq has a thriving, if unruly, political system and well-trained security forces, capable of guarding its borders and putting down continuing insurgency.
Neither side dwelled on the many challenges facing Iraq, including the lack of a law to split oil riches in a way that minimizes a poisonous ethnic divide, and the lingering sense of disenfranchisement on the part of some Sunnis that is fueling a deadly insurgency.
Camp Victory, the sprawling military headquarters in Baghdad that became emblematic of American power, will be officially handed over to Iraqi control on Friday.
But even before then, evidence of the United States’ new civilian presence abounded. Mr. Biden’s staff and reporters were flown from the huge American Embassy to Camp Victory in helicopters emblazoned with the State Department’s seal.
Speaking of the criticisms that the United States should have left troops in Iraq longer for security, Mr. Biden said, “In my view, and the president’s view, those arguments not only misunderstand Iraqi politics, but they underestimate the Iraqi people.”
In an interview after the ceremony, Mr. Biden said the pivot from military strategy to forging a political settlement was the Obama administration’s major contribution to the war effort.
Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki expressed thanks to former President George W. Bush for signing the 2008 agreement that set the timetable for the departure (though he did not thank him for his role in toppling Mr. Hussein) and to President Obama for sticking to that timetable. He also issued what appeared to be an oblique warning to Iran not to destabilize Iraq by backing insurgent groups that carry out deadly attacks.
“The withdrawal operation will take away all the slogans that some countries hide behind in order to interfere in the internal affairs of Iraq,” Mr. Maliki said.
In many ways, Mr. Biden embodies the United States’ anguished history with the war. As a senator, he voted in 2002 to authorize the invasion of Iraq, a decision he later said he regretted. In 2007, he took a decidedly different stance on engagement, opposing the troop surge and declaring that its architect, Gen. David H. Petraeus, was “dead, flat wrong.”
Mr. Biden also wrote a seminal essay in 2005, along with Leslie H. Gelb, of the Council on Foreign Relations, that called for decentralizing Iraq to give some autonomy to its Kurds, Sunni Arabs and Shiite Arabs. The proposal was dismissed by the Bush administration, and Mr. Biden complained that it had been misconstrued as a plan to partition the country.
Still, Mr. Biden kept at his commitment to Iraq, turning himself into an avid student of the country’s tribal politics. He has traveled to Iraq 16 times as a senator and vice president, building relationships that have allowed him to act as a go-between with the country’s ethnic leaders. He relishes, for example, analyzing the rivalry between Mr. Maliki, a Shiite, and Massoud Barzani, the president of the Iraqi Kurdistan region, whom he met with later on Thursday.
Iraq also has deep personal resonance for the vice president. Mr. Biden’s son Joseph R. Biden III, known as Beau, was deployed here as a member of the Delaware National Guard in 2008 while his father was running for vice president. He returned home in 2009, when Mr. Biden was directing Iraq policy at the White House.
The vice president spoke Thursday of his son, as well as to the 4,486 Americans who died in Iraq and whom he called “fallen angels.” Many others, he added, bear scars from their experience.
“We owe you,” Mr. Biden said, his voice thick with emotion. “We owe you.”
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By MARK LANDLER
Published: December 1, 2011
CAMP VICTORY, Iraq — As the United States prepared to turn over this optimistically named military base to Iraq, leaders of both countries held a solemn commemoration here on Thursday of the sacrifices of American and Iraqi troops during eight years of war, marking the moment in a garish marble palace built by Saddam Hussein.
Connect With Us on Twitter
Follow @nytimesworld for international breaking news and headlines.
With verses from the Koran and the words of President Harry S. Truman, Iraq’s top officials and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. paid tribute to each other’s soldiers, pledged friendship, and celebrated an orderly departure by the United States that many in both countries would not have predicted even a few years ago.
“The tide of war is receding, and the soul of Baghdad remains, the soul of Iraq remains,” Mr. Biden said to an audience of about 300 American and Iraqi troops. Citing Truman’s speech after Germany surrendered in World War II in 1945, he said the end of war was a “solemn but glorious hour.”
In a day of hopeful statements that tried to cast the war in its most positive light, Iraq’s president, Jalal Talabani, said that in moving beyond dictatorship Iraq served as a beacon for the political upheavals of the Arab Spring.
“History will record that the liberation of our country was not only an important turning point in Iraq itself,” he said, “but it was an important beginning for the region.”
The ceremony on Thursday was not, strictly speaking, a handover. The war — which has been winding down in phases with a drawdown of troops that started in 2009 — will not end definitively until the last American soldier leaves Iraqi soil in the next few weeks.
Still, the ceremony was freighted with the symbolism of a foreign power’s leaving, and an occupied country’s reclaiming its sovereignty. Iraq’s red-white-and-black flags were hung from balconies, unfurling grandly as a military band played the Iraqi national anthem. An Iraqi honor guard, in crimson uniforms, lined the entrance to the palace, which was festooned with yellow and red tinsel, strung on barbed wire.
Mr. Talabani, who bestowed medals on Mr. Biden; the American military commander, Gen. Lloyd Austin III; and ambassadors from other countries that contributed troops to the coalition, pledged that Iraq would remain a friend of the United States.
The vice president, as he has throughout his visit, portrayed the withdrawal as evidence that the United States keeps its promises. American soldiers, he said peering at those present in the audience, were leaving Iraq, “taking nothing with you but your experience.”
“Because of you,” he said, “and because of the work you have done, we are now able to end this war.”
Mr. Biden also addressed the criticisms, leveled by Senator John McCain of Arizona and other critics, that the United States was abandoning Iraq to a potentially dangerous fate. He talked of the progress he had seen from his earliest trips here, when, he said, bodies piled up daily in Baghdad’s morgue and driving on its highways, riddled with bombs, was a test of faith.
Now, Mr. Biden insisted, Iraq has a thriving, if unruly, political system and well-trained security forces, capable of guarding its borders and putting down continuing insurgency.
Neither side dwelled on the many challenges facing Iraq, including the lack of a law to split oil riches in a way that minimizes a poisonous ethnic divide, and the lingering sense of disenfranchisement on the part of some Sunnis that is fueling a deadly insurgency.
Camp Victory, the sprawling military headquarters in Baghdad that became emblematic of American power, will be officially handed over to Iraqi control on Friday.
But even before then, evidence of the United States’ new civilian presence abounded. Mr. Biden’s staff and reporters were flown from the huge American Embassy to Camp Victory in helicopters emblazoned with the State Department’s seal.
Speaking of the criticisms that the United States should have left troops in Iraq longer for security, Mr. Biden said, “In my view, and the president’s view, those arguments not only misunderstand Iraqi politics, but they underestimate the Iraqi people.”
In an interview after the ceremony, Mr. Biden said the pivot from military strategy to forging a political settlement was the Obama administration’s major contribution to the war effort.
Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki expressed thanks to former President George W. Bush for signing the 2008 agreement that set the timetable for the departure (though he did not thank him for his role in toppling Mr. Hussein) and to President Obama for sticking to that timetable. He also issued what appeared to be an oblique warning to Iran not to destabilize Iraq by backing insurgent groups that carry out deadly attacks.
“The withdrawal operation will take away all the slogans that some countries hide behind in order to interfere in the internal affairs of Iraq,” Mr. Maliki said.
In many ways, Mr. Biden embodies the United States’ anguished history with the war. As a senator, he voted in 2002 to authorize the invasion of Iraq, a decision he later said he regretted. In 2007, he took a decidedly different stance on engagement, opposing the troop surge and declaring that its architect, Gen. David H. Petraeus, was “dead, flat wrong.”
Mr. Biden also wrote a seminal essay in 2005, along with Leslie H. Gelb, of the Council on Foreign Relations, that called for decentralizing Iraq to give some autonomy to its Kurds, Sunni Arabs and Shiite Arabs. The proposal was dismissed by the Bush administration, and Mr. Biden complained that it had been misconstrued as a plan to partition the country.
Still, Mr. Biden kept at his commitment to Iraq, turning himself into an avid student of the country’s tribal politics. He has traveled to Iraq 16 times as a senator and vice president, building relationships that have allowed him to act as a go-between with the country’s ethnic leaders. He relishes, for example, analyzing the rivalry between Mr. Maliki, a Shiite, and Massoud Barzani, the president of the Iraqi Kurdistan region, whom he met with later on Thursday.
Iraq also has deep personal resonance for the vice president. Mr. Biden’s son Joseph R. Biden III, known as Beau, was deployed here as a member of the Delaware National Guard in 2008 while his father was running for vice president. He returned home in 2009, when Mr. Biden was directing Iraq policy at the White House.
The vice president spoke Thursday of his son, as well as to the 4,486 Americans who died in Iraq and whom he called “fallen angels.” Many others, he added, bear scars from their experience.
“We owe you,” Mr. Biden said, his voice thick with emotion. “We owe you.”
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