[AlAhram] There was a time when people thought that the United States would not withdraw from Iraq and abandon the country that it had invaded to topple an entrenched and autocratic regime and allegedly build a modern state that could eventually join the club of secular democracies.
And there was a time, too, just a few years later, when scepticism greeted the idea that Washington would curtail the US military presence in Iraq after the administration of former president George W Bush finalised a pact with Baghdad that set out a path for the US withdrawal.
In both cases, doubters said that Washington would not really exit from Iraq after nearly a decade of costly intervention, even if some American politicians were eager to leave the messy conflict that had started with the 2003 US-led invasion. |