War Endings

Reflections on the U.S. Exit From Iraq

| published October 4, 2026 |

By Bob Armstrong, Thursday Review contributor

The last time Americans witnessed a glorious ending to a war took place in 1945. So exhilarating, Berlin in smokey ruins, tall buildings flat as a pancake, and the charcoal skeleton of a big brass bed standing in front of a fire-bombed mansion in a wealthy neighborhood. Better yet, Hitler's suicide. He sits on a horsehair blue-and-white sofa, places his Walther pistol on his right temple, squeezes the trigger while simultaneously biting into a cap of potassium cyanide. SS guards haul his corpse out of the bunker and carefully drop it in a burial trench in the Reich Chancellery garden, douse it with gasoline, and light the match that should have been preserved in a museum for making the top spot in 20th-century history despite the fact the Thousand-Year Reich Hitler dreamed of only lasted 12.

Since the Berlin apocalypse, most American war endings have been sad affairs, certainly nothing to celebrate.

In 1953 American and South Korean flags flew together over Seoul after the armistice was signed. This shared sacrifice has dimmed over the years as communist North Korea has managed to become the most vicious totalitarian state on the planet. In Vietnam, we didn't even have the opportunity to negotiate a decent peace arrangement. The North Vietnamese Army made sure of that, bringing the war to an end with a victory lap, their tanks rolling onto the grounds of the presidential palace in Saigon in 1975. Not long after, just to rub it in, the North Vietnamese rulers changed the name of Saigon to Ho Chi Minh City.

Korea, at least, was a 50/50 wash, half (almost) free and half communist. Vietnam was the first and only time America lost a war. However, even here we did end up winning in one sense. The communist party in Vietnam has discovered all the benefits of capitalism, even allowing the Trump family business to build a huge hotel and golf resort just outside Hanoi.

The ending in Afghanistan arrived in 2021 under President Joe Biden. Not a defeat, not a victory, just a stunning mess. The chaotic evacuation of U. S. Embassy staff whisked away in helicopters and airplanes looked like cut and run. What was left behind was a nice stockpile of military equipment for the Taliban forces who quickly reemerged in Kabul.

Now, as the war in Iran enters its ninth month, President Trump announced the final withdrawal of troops from Iraq. "I had a chance to stay in or leave, and felt, without question, that it was time for America to go home!" he wrote on Truth Social.

This particular ending to a war really is not an ending at all. Just a footnote to a war already over except for a small mop-up crew. Only about 2,500 American servicemen and women remained in Iraq, almost all of them at the Erbil Airbase in northern Iraq. The base served as a central hub for the joint operation with Iraqi forces to fight off an ISIS insurgency. The war pretty much ended in 2011 when all American troops were pulled out. However, we went back in in 2014 when ISIS began consolidating its hold across Iraq, gaining control of almost one third of the country's territory. This return in 2014 was mostly successful, driving out the ISIS militia by 2017 and thereby reducing its chance to remain a military threat throughout the Middle East.

When the war ended in Iraq is far less important than the cost of the war in treasure and blood. Expensive, no doubt, but a few trillion going down the drain isn't really all that bad. Look at it this way: without that war, the national debt would be 37 trillion instead of 40 trillion dollars. Despite Iran's threat to Iraq, the country is much better off without Saddam, a ruthless dictator.

Blood raises more fundamental issues, but here too the news is quite good. After all, blood is what war is all about. Or, used to be. During World War One, the German author of several war novels, Ernst Junger, said of his comrades in arms, "Our blood is full of passions and feelings that have no place at tea-time." By this he means the reality of battle is worthwhile, even precious, to the warrior, but beyond the comprehension of civilians watching the war at a distance, and worse, babbling on about the eve of destruction.

What distinguishes WWI and WWII from the Korea/Vietnam/Iraq-Afghanistan/Iran combination is the quantity of blood. Multi-millions of bloodied dead bodies in the first two; thousands in the rest—33 thousand Americans in Korea, 55 thousand in Vietnam, 7,000 in Iraq/Afghanistan, a mere 18 so far in Iran. I don't mean to be callous with the word "mere." The cliché holds true that every life is precious. But in war, not for better but for worse, the body count counts. Fewer body bags, fewer anti-war rallies, public opinion mostly on the side of the troops.

When Trump declared "we're getting the hell out of there" he also noted unlike Iraq the war in Iran would not turn into another twenty-year "quagmire." Even at this early stage in the current war, the Q-word is batted about incessantly in the media, think tanks, and especially among democrats with left-wing tendencies who look forward to the United States getting bogged down in another Forever War.

In "Vietnam: The Necessary War," the historian Michael Lind points out that "avoiding quagmires means avoiding intervention." All future wars will be quagmires. If the United States is to continue its role as a leading world power, "American soldiers must learn to swim in quagmires." They will, but only if the country's leaders start taking swimming lessons.



Bob Armstrong is a journalist and writer, and the author of a new memoir, No Exit From Vietnam, available on Amazon; Armstrong is a frequent contributor to Thursday Review, and his writing has also appeared in the Washington Examiner.


Related Thursday Review articles:

Vietnam's Communists Quietly Surrender to Capitalism, With a Trump Resort; By Bob Armstrong, Thursday Review contributor; July 31, 2026.

Saving Lives in War; By Bob Armstrong, Thursday Review contributor; May 18, 2026.