Did Obama end the war in Iraq?

Don’t be absurd.

Either one of two situations was the case when Obama began the troop withdrawal.

Option one:  Iraq was more or less at peace, and tolerably stable.  Al Qaeda was vanquished, a democratic government in place.  There was no war, there were just US troops stationed in Iraq to prevent a new war from starting, in much the same way as American troops remained stationed in Germany long after the Nazis were defeated (and my Dad, one of those troops, likes to say that the war wasn’t entirely Cold, but that the Russians would periodically lob some missiles across the border, and the U.S. would respond).  In that scenario, Obama’s action in removing American troops from Iraq was not “ending the war,” but simply just the blander “restationing the troops.”

(This explanation asks us to believe that Iraq’s present troubles are wholly unconnected to anything going on while U.S. troops were stationed in Iraq.)

Or option two:  Iraq wasn’t at peace.  The situation could at best be described as a lull in the fighting.  Did Obama’s removal of the troops end the war?  Hey, guys, in case you haven’t noticed, there’s a war going on now.  Obama’s action could at best be described as “ending U.S. participation in the war,” in much the same way as was true in Vietnam, where the war didn’t actually end until North Vietnam conquered South Vietnam.

So, how do we get the journalists to fix their stylebook, and replace “Obama ended the war in Iraq” with “Obama ended U.S. participation in the war”?  Do we need a clever twitter hashtag, or a witty social media campaign?

(Come to think of it, we have troops in South Korea.  If Obama restationed these troops, and the Norks came swarming across the border, Obama wouldn’t be ending the war, but might well be considered to be the immediate cause of a new war!)