For half a decade the war in Iraq was the most controversial and important issue in international politics. But when the American military slipped out of the country last week, the world hardly noticed.
Europe is obsessed by its sovereign debt crisis. The nations of the Middle East are now much more pre-occupied by the Arab spring, than by Iraq. Even the US itself paused only briefly, before turning back to domestic economic concerns and the soap opera of a presidential election. The death of Kim Jong-il in North Korea will ensure once and for all the world’s gaze will not linger on the sight of the last American military convoy crossing over from Iraq into Kuwait.
There is something strange and unseemly about this lack of reflection on the end of the Iraq war. More than 100,000 Iraqi civilians died as a result of the conflict – according to the probably conservative estimate of the Iraq Body Count, an NGO. Millions of Iraqis became refugees. Thousands of American and allied troops were killed and maimed.