respect in the absence of americans that had the overwhelming force to drive it down everyone s throat. enormous relief here that these troops will be coming home given the vast sacrifices made financially and indeed in terms of the lives of people. what do you think ordinary families are thinking? are they celebrating the document by the president? that depends on who you ask. iraq has paid a heavy, heavy price. 100,000 iraqis have died. iraqis have paid dearly and some of them are going to say is america s involvement after nine years brought about a better iraq? that s a very tough question. is it on the right path? some will be concerned. we can say that today s document by president obama did not come as a result of agreement, but came as a result of the absence of an agreement which is that the iraqis could not provide
are losing some credibility. they are so ungracious in this, there is no reason they couldn t say president bush deserves credit and if you feel like you have to say that and president obama deserves credit, but let s keep the most credit on the troops. they are so ungracious. it will be interesting as we go forward in the presidential election as the republican candidates hopefully get further embedded on their foreign policy ideas. rick perry s communications director saying something ignorant about how he said that president obama s strategy in the mideast has been so incoherent when actually i think it has been coherent and understood that you can t take a cookie cutter approach. libya is not egypt and they didn t seem to understand that. i hope we get to that in this election cycle. a final question. do you think herman can spell the word iraq? i m sure he can spell iraq, but i m not certain he knows
they didn t accomplish all they had wanted. but the iranians are not foolish enough to want to send thousands of troops across that border now. there is a strong sense of nationalism in both countries. they are a deep ethnic divide that dates back centuries. iran wants a security border whether it s iraq on one side or afghanistan on the other. yes, they want the united states to go because they feel threatened and long worried that the united states was taking aim at tehran next. i m not convinced that the iranians will use this as a means to get troops in iraq. given the majority shia population in both nations, what do you think this will mean for minority groups. i m thinking of sunni muslims and a remnant of christians who live in iraq. all the countries in the mideast with sectarian differences are facing the challenge whether it s iraq in the aftermath of the u.s. withdrawal or syria as you find
we also hear reports. the past years, the goal was to build an iraqi army and identify first with iraq and then with the community. they have moved battalions or brigades to the north or the south. they tried to mix them and they are serving with one another. that hasn t always been successful in the kurdish part. iraqi forces that they made up of shia and sunnis rarely go into the northern part because that belongs to the kurds. it s absolutely difficult to build a cohesive identity right now for iraqis. a lot of people blame the americans because the problems were kept under a lid by saddam in oppressive ways. can iraq build with mutual
i think there is a sense that in the region the policy changeed from a decade ago when they were using military force to chart aims and today it s playing a background role whether in nato or libya or in there is a very different american role today. i think that s widely welcomed. there will be a nervousness about their security, but the americans were not necessarily the guarantee of their safety either. thank you so much for joining us. thank you. you stay with us. let me be clear. we must be as careful getting out of iraq as we were careless getting in. from capital one. spark miles gives me the most rewards of any small business credit card. the spark card earns double miles. so we really had to up our game.