Finally, an end for U.S. in Iraq

The nation finally got the news about Iraq it waited nine long years to hear. President Barack Obama announced Friday that the last American troops will be withdrawn by the end of the year.

The war in Iraq will soon be over.

It's a surprisingly quiet end to a conflict that roiled this nation since the March 2003 invasion. The incomparable American military and its allies deposed a brutal, erratic dictator in Iraq, and gave that nation a real chance for a free and democratic future. That's no small thing. The men and women in uniform who risked all in the fight and the reconstruction afterward -- particularly the 4,400 who gave their lives -- richly deserve the nation's gratitude. They performed brilliantly.

But despite our military victory, U.S. credibility took a beating as official justifications for the war shifted over the years from stripping Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, which didn't exist, to avenging the attacks of 9/11, which Iraq had nothing to do with. Eventually we settled on exporting democracy.

This editorial page supported going to war in Iraq. But in hindsight, Operation Iraqi Freedom was a war of choice the United States should not have fought. It cost almost $1 trillion and lasted far too long. The collateral damage included our embrace of secret prisons, torture and extraordinary rendition, a euphemism for kidnapping.

The deal that marked the beginning of the end of the conflict came in 2008, when President George W. Bush and Iraqi officials set a withdrawal schedule. In August 2010, Obama declared the combat mission over. Today there are fewer than 40,000 U.S. troops in Iraq.

Until Friday, the plan was to leave several thousand behind to continue training Iraqi security forces. Obama abandoned that arrangement when Iraq refused to give those servicemen and women immunity from prosecution in Iraqi courts. That was Baghdad's mistake. It's time to leave Iraq to the Iraqis.