WASHINGTON — President Trump hailed the final withdrawal of US troops from Iraq Wednesday — telling guests at the White House that “we’re getting the hell out of there” and insisting his war with Iran won’t drag on for more than two decades like the invasion that toppled dictator Saddam Hussein.
“It was a quagmire. Many, many years it lasted, but soon that part of history will be over,” Trump said at a Hispanic heritage celebration, recounting the US invasion of 2003 and subsequent anti-insurgency campaigns.
“We’re getting the hell out of there,” the president went on, calling Iraq “a place where we probably shouldn’t have gone.”
“This day is a victory for the United States. It’s a victory for Iraq and a decisive victory over ISIS,” he added, praising Baghdad’s “wonderful new prime minister” Ali al-Zadi.
“This orderly departure of coalition forces and equipment from Erbil Air Base marks the end of a very expensive excursion into hell.”
Trump then compared and contrasted the Iraq war, in which about 4,500 US service members were killed, with Operation Epic Fury against Iran, where he said “we have been there for six months with 18 killed.”
“We have a war [with Venezuela] that was over in 148 minutes,” he continued. “We have another one where we’re six months in… and we’re going to have that war won very quickly, one way or the other.”
US negotiators have struggled for months to reach a deal that reopens the Strait of Hormuz and ends Tehran’s nuclear program — with Trump predicting a resolution shortly after the Nov. 3 midterm election.
Trump ran for president three times pledging to avoid long-term US interventions in the Middle East and rebuking the “warmongers” in his own party, but many former allies fear the current conflict will drag on in exactly the same manner.
In an implicit contrast between the two conflicts, Trump blasted the initial invasion of Iraq under President George W. Bush in a Wednesday afternoon social media post, writing there was “very bad decision-making that got us involved in this quagmire.”
“I set a clear mission, gave our Commanders the tools to finish it, and refused to let a temporary presence become a permanent one,” he wrote of the US role in Iraq.
US troops previously left Iraq in 2011 under President Barack Obama — before returning in 2014 after ISIS terrorists seized control of about a third of the country.
