Iraq
In mid-2002, the George W. Bush Administration initiated the deployment of U.S. troops to Kuwait with the intention of overthrowing the government of Saddam Hussein. The invasion of Iraq began in 2003, led by General Tommy Franks, who outlined eight objectives: firstly, ending the regime of Saddam Hussein; secondly, identifying, isolating, and eliminating Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction; thirdly, searching for, capturing, and driving out terrorists from the country; fourthly, collecting intelligence related to terrorist networks; fifthly, gathering intelligence related to the global network of illicit weapons of mass destruction; sixthly, ending sanctions and delivering humanitarian support to the displaced and needy Iraqi citizens; seventhly, securing Iraq’s oil fields and resources, which belong to the Iraqi people; and lastly, helping the Iraqi people create conditions for a transition to a representative self-government. Despite resistance from the Iraqi military, Baghdad fell to the multinational forces on April 9, 2002. With the fall of Tikrit later, it was concluded that the initial invasion phase was over. However, the insurgency began in 2003 due to the unorganized government that was left in the wake of Saddam Hussein’s fall. The war in Iraq over the next five years was protracted and often saw cities, towns, or pieces of land gained and lost by occupying forces due to the difficulty in identifying the enemy and the civil unrest that the country of Iraq and its government had to contend with. In late 2007, a troop surge was planned to help quell the unrest and try to provide stability to Iraq. In 2009, Iraq held democratic elections, the first since before Hussein’s reign began. In 2010, the U.S. drew down, and Operation Iraqi Freedom was replaced by Operation New Dawn on February 17, 2010. The last U.S. troops withdrew from Iraq on December 18, 2011. Following the U.S. troop withdrawal in 2011, civil unrest began to rise and spiral out of control, leading to the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) taking over the cities of Mosul and Tikrit and making moves towards Baghdad. On June 29, 2014, ISIL formally declared the new Islamic state, encompassing lands in Iraq which it had taken over along with Iraqi Kurdish forces. With the rise in threat to the people of Iraq, U.S. leaders realized that they had “underestimated ISIL and overestimated the ability of the Iraqi Military to fend off ISIL.” In late 2014, President Obama announced the return of troops to Iraq in the form of aerial support to halt ISIL advancements, render humanitarian aid, and stabilize the state politically. U.S. involvement in Iraq is now mostly conducted through aerial support, although some troops are on the ground and conducting missions. Most troops are deployed to advise, assist, train, and equip the Iraqi security forces.
