The last non-American troops are on their way out of Iraq:
BAGHDAD — Commanders of the Multi-National Force-Iraq, as the American-led military coalition here is formally called, have a looming nomenclature problem.
Two days from now, there will no longer be any other nations with troops in Iraq — no “multi” in the Multi-National Force. As Iraqi forces have increasingly taken the lead, the United States will become the last of the “coalition of the willing” that the Bush administration first brought together in 2003.
That has come about as much through parliamentary maneuvering as anything else. The Iraqi Parliament recessed Monday and left a ream of undecided legislation behind — including an extension to an agreement that would allow the British military to keep a residual training force of 100 soldiers in Iraq. As a result, those troops will withdraw to Kuwait by Friday, according to a British diplomat, who declined to be identified in keeping with his government’s practice.
The other two small remnants of the coalition, the Romanians and Australians, will also be gone on Friday, if not before then. NATO will keep a token training presence in Iraq, but those troops were never considered part of the multi-national force because of widespread opposition to the war from many member countries.
Coalition military officials acknowledged the need for a name change, and said Multi-National Force-Iraq would officially become United States Force-Iraq as of Jan. 1, 2010, according to Lt. Col. Mike Stewart. “This is done to reflect the new bilateral relationship between U.S. forces and our Iraqi hosts,” he said.
In reality, of course, the “coalition of the willing” was, other than the British, little more than a Potemkin force designed to create the illusion that the Iraq War was an international effort, rather than an American one:
Aside from the initial invasion phase when the British sent 45,000 troops, the coalition of the willing rarely exceeded 10 percent of the United States force commitment. Contributors ranged from Tonga to Mongolia, from Nicaragua to Moldova. Many were Eastern European countries, and few countries with large militaries contributed.
A total of 38 countries contributed soldiers over the past six years, in groups usually numbering in the low hundreds. One of the low points came when Japan contributed a force that it announced would not fight, and as a result Dutch troops had to be deployed to guard them.
So, since this “coalition” was a joke from the beginning, it’s really not news that the illusion is finally coming to an end.
