Don't all world politics in the end resume to this? "Hoping for the best"

I suspect the editors went for the helicopters since it is such a famous image. In fact, the question is "did we just have a 1973 Paris Peace Accords moment?" Obviously, the US troop withdrawl from SVN happened two years before the final North Vietnamese offensive (which, of course, broke the agreement, and which, of course, was a direct result of the US pulling out of SVN).

"lest the country slip back into chaos and conflict.". Surely Iraq has been in chaos and conflict since the invasion and still is.

Once the US is gone, Iraq will fracture due to sectarian and tribal factions. Not to mention that Iran will surely be in htere helping out. Iraq is lost and again, the US cuts and runs due to a chicken s**t President. No one has the guts to do what must be done, so we tip toe away hoping other countries won;t notice. Who can trust the US anymore? Our leaders are pathetic wimps, particularly Obama. The Dems loose Congress in Nove and good bye Obama in 2012. Chris Cristie for President!!!

I don't know why Foreign Policy used this as a lead to the story. Perhaps, like Vietnam, this is a war that never should have been fought. The whole Iraq debacle was based on a lie, perpetuated through our hubris, and finally - through exhaustion rather than success - is drawing to a rather unsatisfactory close. The loss in lives and treasure is a tragic cost to our nation and to those who were sacrificed for the egos of our leaders.

Negroponte is hardly a reliable source about the state of Iraqi politics or stability. He was one of the many neo-con collaborators who justified this needless and wasteful travesty of a "great power" military intervention into the affairs of a third-world nation.

Whatever becomes of Iraq, we need to let the Iraqi people decide their own fate. Whether Iraq completes the process of becoming a modern parliamentary democracy should be of little concern to us. We (1) got rid of their dictator for them; (2)created the opportunity for the majority Shiite to take control of their political apparatus and the military; (3) gave them a constitution that ought to preserve basic individual rights; and (4) bought off the Sunni insurgents so they could have relative peace. We have now begun to get out of the way - although 50,000 troops still there as "advisors and trainers" and untold thousands of private mercenaries working for the US State Department hardly qualifies as abandoning Iraq to its own devices. If they are unsuccessful, I hardly see how that is any basis for any soulful mourning on our part.

Success or failure, from this point forward, is up to the Kurds, Shiite and Sunni factions and their elected leaders. If they want to join the modern world, they have an opportunity. If they fail, it should not be because of any error on our part. If they cannot or do not make it without our intervention, that is too dammed bad. If they are successful, I don't expect them to be grateful to the US and its allies in any case.

While it is good that we are getting out of Iraq, lets not forget that we paid a very high price -- that we will continue paying for decades -- in order to oust a bad dictator. The cost-benefit analysis doesn't look very weighted toward benefits considering it was a war of choice and not absolutely necessary to go in. Harvard Professor Linda Bilmes wrote an excellent piece in the San Francisco Chronicle this week about the long-term enduring costs of this war:

Read: http://articles.sfgate.com/2010-08-15/opinion/22220424_1_combat-troops-big-costs-disability-compensation

In all of Negroponte's wishful blatherings he forgot to mention a number of things. He sat with George Tenet at the UN as Colin Powell, good soldier that he was, read off the lies that had been prepared by the White House. In fairness to Powell he had a number of his own State Department Intell men pick apart and throw out almost 30 additional bits of false intelligence before the speech.
The Iraqi Army only took back control in Basra with the help of 1000 US combat troops and artillery and jet fighters.
This man's fixation with the idea of keeping the largest US embassy in the world in Baghdad fully staffed with a huge group of bureaucrats is quite obvious. If we were trying to impress the Iraqis with our sincerity, the staff should have been reduced drastically, at least 60%.The only Iraqis who would want to even talk to us would be the ones who want to get money. Even they hate our guts as most of the country does. I see the day that the Iraqi Army uses battle tanks that we have provided to kick the rest of the Americans out of the country and close down the embassy. Negroponte's smarmy "Let bygones be bygones" is not going to cut it with the Iraqis. They will hate us for the next ten generations for having invaded their country without just cause. The destabilization lead to the death of at least 100,000 people from violence alone, corruption on a grand scale, and the most basic services as electricity in short supply. My suggestion would be to fire and imprison the Princes of the Pentagon who have lost/stolen many biillions of dollars for infrastrucure rebuilding in Iraq. Turn that money over to the Iraqis for each project and release it as the projects are completed. Let the Iraqis do it because they have more than enough technical experts.

Its great to hear that finally we're going to be out of Iraq.. its dragged on way to long and to be honest i never really through it was going to workout anyway.

Who can trust the US anymore? Our leaders are pathetic wimps, particularly Obama. The Dems loose Congress in Nove and good bye Obama in 2012. Chris Cristie for President!!!
seslisohbet

The U.S. Combat presence in Iraq is over, and it's likely all troops will be gone by the end of next year. But strong support will still be needed in the weeks and months to come, lest the country slip back into chaos and conflict is insightful newspaper column and I think John D. Negroponte wrote some good ideas. "Combat brigade to leave Iraq crossed into Kuwait, fulfilling President Barack Obama's pledge to withdraw all but 50,000 American troops from a country with which the United States has become intimately, and painfully, familiar over the last 7 and a half years. The remaining soldiers and marines will stay in Iraq until Dec. 31, 2011, for training and other support purposes." We should be thankful that John D. Negroponte finally wrote an article as this one. My subject of concern is generally send flowers, remanufactured q2612a and auto car insurance, I simply wanted to say that I value the reflection behind the the beginning of the end newspaper column.

it's great to see one of US troops leaving Iraq.? I hope the best to come. I think though there's going to be a civil war though...
Obama? needs to bring our young men and women home safely from Afghanistan now. Afghanistan is totally rezultate live unwinnable.