When President Barack Obama entered office in 2009, he immediately put the wheels in motion to ratchet back U.S. involvement in Iraq, where about 150,000 troops were deployed. The last convoy of U.S. troops left Iraq in December 2011, and Obama cast the moment as a success.
"The end of war in Iraq reflects a larger transition," Obama said in an October 2011 statement. "The tide of war is receding. The drawdown in Iraq allowed us to refocus our fight against al-Qaida and achieve major victories against its leadership — including Osama bin Laden."
Ending the war was a signature component of Obama's 2008 campaign platform. Amid the transition out of Iraq, we rated the promise a Promise Kept.
But just a couple of years later, it became abundantly clear that all was not well in Iraq. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki started to show signs of authoritarianism, suppressing Sunni voices in the government. Radical Islamic fighters affiliated with al-Qaida, calling themselves the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), gained ground by capitalizing on a lack of effective government leadership in Iraq and its neighbor to the west, Syria. And the Iraqi military started to crumble, putting up little resistance as ISIS easily captured territory, notably the city of Mosul in 2014.
"Iraq is significantly worse than when he took office," said Stephen Biddle, who advised the Bush administration in Iraq and the Obama administration in Afghanistan.
The 2011 troop withdrawal is not the sole reason ISIS was able to thrive amid so much unrest. It is reasonable, though, to consider that had Obama been able to leave a significant American presence in Iraq, or had he intervened in Syria's conflict early on, ISIS would not have been able to strengthen so rapidly.
"When the U.S. left Iraq, the message we sent to everybody in Iraq is that we don't care about the outcome anymore," said Kori Schake, who served as director for Defense Strategy and Requirements on the National Security Council under Bush. "ISIS realized, 'We're not going to have to fight the United States.' "
At the end of his presidency, Obama will be able to say he ended the military operation in Iraq that he inherited in 2009, Operation Iraqi Freedom. He leaves behind, however, a new one: Operation Inherent Resolve, launched in 2014 to fight ISIS in Iraq and Syria, with the United States acting as the main driver of a 60-member coalition.
And while there are far fewer U.S. soldiers in Iraq than when Obama entered office — about 5,000 — the number keeps creeping up. Notably, hundreds of U.S. troops have advised and assisted Iraqi forces in the battle to retake the city of Mosul from ISIS, which began in October.
Some of Obama's defenders argue that the current level of American military engagement is more sustainable than it was eight years ago, and Obama deserves credit for responding to geopolitical reality while using as little force as possible. Any president would have had to deal with the political upheavals in Iraq that were, to some extent, unpredictable, said Anthony Cordesman, a consultant of the State Department and the Defense Department under Bush and Obama.
Obama himself said recently that countries like Iraq, to a certain extent, have to solve their own problems instead of relying on the United States going forward.
This doesn't change the fact that the U.S. military remains entangled in war in Iraq despite Obama's declaration in 2011 and less U.S. involvement.
We rate this a Compromise.