USA:s trupp-tillbakadragande (men 50.000 fullfjädrade soldater stannar kvar) från helvetet Irak

Utdrag ur i tysk press (understrykningar har jag gjort).
Källa Der Spiegel.

The center-left Süddeutsche Zeitung writes:
"The invasion of Iraq was wrong, unjust and damaging."

"For the Iraqi people one inscrutable, violent regime has been replaced by another. And the promises of freedom and democracy are worthless if they can't run a generator or help buy food."

"This practical disillusion is paired with the strategic defeats that America has suffered… Because the invasion of Iraq broke international law, it reduced the meaning of that law for regulating how states deal with one another and damaged the UN's legitimacy, which is responsible for enforcing it."

"America's claim to leadership is broken, its credibility severely damaged. The world has become more confusing and less safe. That is the legacy of this war."

The business daily Handelsblatt writes:
"The Iraqi Army is hardly in a position to provide security. The people will have to suffer much bloodshed in the future because the roots of terrorism have not been dealt with. Iraq is not able to deal with this by itself. It still doesn't have a functioning government after the elections in March. This double vacuum provides a fertile breeding ground for extremist groups."
"Washington has suffered terrible damage to its image in the Middle East. Iraq is not pacified and the Taliban is resurgent in Afghanistan because the US concentrated its military capacity in Iraq. Neighboring Iran is playing cat and mouse on the nuclear issue while peace between the Israelis and Palestinians is out of reach."

The Financial Times Deutschland writes:
"President Barack Obama wants to make clear that he is sticking to one of his most important election promises and is bringing the troops back home. There is nothing much more to it. The war is far from over, never mind won."

"Around 50,000 American soldiers are staying in Iraq and contrary to what the government seems to be suggesting, they are fullfledged soldiers who will attack if need be."

The conservative Die Welt writes:
"After years of being on the defensive and of strategic drift the US military proved itself capable of learning and turned around a war that hardly anyone thought was winnable. An amazing achievement."

The left-leaning Die Tageszeitung writes:
"The Anglo-American war in Iraq and the subsequent occupation was a severe breach of international law. The collected justifications by the Bush and Blair governments for the war were lies from the beginning. A later attempted justification was the deposing of Saddam Hussein, a dictator who the West and the Soviet Union had backed in the late 70s and armed for his war against the Islamic revolutionary regime in neigboring Iran."

"What price was paid for the overthrow of Saddam? Over 100,000 civilians have died as a direct consequence of the war and other acts of violence since March 2003."

"In Iraq 4,419 US soldiers lost their lives and tens of thousands came home injured or with terrible trauma. The Pentagon budget since 2003 for the war and occupation was over $740 billion. Some experts put the actual cost for the US economy at $3 trillion. Yet despite these huge costs and victims, Iraq is neither pacified in the long-term nor politically stable."