War on Terror: The Iraq War

By the end of 2002, President George W. Bush had become dissatisfied with Saddam Hussein's level of cooperation with U.N. weapons inspectors searching for weapons of mass destruction inside Iraq and decided on regime change. On March 17, 2003, Bush gave Saddam an ultimatum to step down within 48 hours or be removed by the U.S. military, and when he refused, Operation Iraqi Freedom began on March 20 with a bombing campaign followed days later by a ground invasion led mainly by American and British troops. Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair failed to assemble the broad multinational coalition that had supported the Persian Gulf War in 1991, and many nations urged more time for inspections, but Bush embraced a more assertive, unilateral, and preemptive approach after 9/11. Coalition victory came quickly as U.S. forces advanced from the south, met little resistance, took Baghdad on April 9, forced Saddam into hiding, and saw other cities including Kirkuk and Tikrit fall soon after; Saddam was captured in December, later tried, and executed in 2006. On May 1, Bush announced that major combat operations had ended, but the occupation proved far more difficult than the invasion. The Bush administration had spent little time planning for post-Saddam Iraq, misjudging the country's history, ethnic and religious diversity, and internal tensions. After the regime was removed and the Iraqi army was disbanded in May 2003, Sunni and Shia Muslims began attacking one another and occupying American troops as part of a multisided insurgency that also included Iraqi nationalists and Islamic terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda, which had not had ties to Iraq before the war but entered Iraq afterward. U.S. troops found themselves amid civil war, roadside bombs, kidnappings, and suicide bombings, and more Americans died during the occupation than in the initial invasion. Public support in the United States declined as the war's two main rationales, weapons of mass destruction and Hussein's supposed link to the 9/11 attacks, failed to materialize. The U.S. sought to build democracy through elections in 2005, but distrust between Shias and Sunnis, political assassination, violence, and weak Iraqi security forces undermined progress. By 2006 many believed the war was being lost, and some members of Congress called for immediate withdrawal, but in January 2007 Bush instead ordered twenty thousand additional troops to Iraq in the surge and placed General David Petraeus in command to apply new counterinsurgency tactics focused more on protecting civilians, especially in Baghdad. By the end of 2007 violence had dropped dramatically and continued to decline, leading the U.S. and Iraq to negotiate withdrawal. The last American combat troops left Iraq on August 18, 2010, with fifty thousand remaining in support roles, and on October 21, 2011, President Barack Obama announced that all U.S. forces would leave by the end of the year, bringing America's nine-year war in Iraq to a close.

Gonzales, Louisiana · United States