President Donald Trump announced on social media platform X on September 30 that the last American forces are leaving Iraq today. He called it "a Great Day for America" and a victory for Iraq, asserting that ISIS has been "completely decimated" by his first-term administration.
Trump reviewed the history of the Iraq war, which began under President George W. Bush in 2003 and continued under the administrations of Barack Obama in 2014 and Joe Biden. He stated that Operation Inherent Resolve ends in 2026 under his leadership. Contrasting with the Afghanistan withdrawal, which left behind military equipment and resulted in 13 U.S. service members killed, he described the departure from Erbil Air Base as "orderly" and "the end of a very expensive excursion into Hell."
Trump expressed support for Iraq's new Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi, who he said won a landslide election against expectations. "We came to fight a caliphate. There is no longer a caliphate. We are going home!" Trump wrote.
