War harder to end than start: Obama

President Barack Obama welcomed home some of the last US troops from Iraq yesterday, marking a symbolic end to the nearly nine-year war that strained America’s armed forces and inflicted lasting damage to its standing worldwide.

Addressing soldiers at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, home of the 82nd Airborne Division, Mr Obama stopped short of declaring victory in Iraq but called the winding down of the conflict “an extraordinary achievement.”

“It is harder to end a war than to begin one,” he told about 3,000 soldiers gathered in a hangar. Despite lingering questions about whether the US should have invaded, the last American troops “will cross the border out of Iraq with their heads held high,” he said.

“Of course, Iraq is not a perfect place. But we are leaving behind a sovereign, stable, and self-reliant Iraq, with a representative government that was elected by its people,” he added. “We are ending a war not with a final battle, but with a final march toward home.”

As of this week, there are about 5,500 US troops left in Iraq, down from more than 170,000 at the height of the war George Bush started in the wake of the 11 September, 2001, attacks.

Leaving Iraq fulfils a promise that helped Mr Obama win the presidency in 2008.