Move FM Global News

BAGHDAD, Iraq – U.S. President Donald Trump and the first lady made a surprise visit to Iraq on Boxing Day.

Having spent two years in office, the president had been copping criticism over his refusal to visit U.S. troops in war zones. 

The Boxing Day visit to Baghdad was the first such visit the president has made to an area where troops are engaged in combat.

The Air Force One flight into Baghdad, in the middle of the night, and amidst heightened security and secrecy, saw the president and Melania Trump together with aides, secret service agents and a large contingent of reporters, land at the air strip at Al Asad Air Base west of Baghdad.

On arrival Mr Trump was photographed being greeted by U.S. troops. He was wearing a black overcoat with a red tie.

For some political commentators, it was like the president going from one war zone to another. He has ventured into an area where hostilities remain long after former President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Chaney made the decision to invade Iraq in March 2003, from Washington DC where Mr Trump is under attack on many fronts. 

One set of recent criticism has been on the hasty decision the president made in relation to the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria and in part, from Afghanistan – decisions made seemingly without consultation with allies.

No decision has yet been announced in relation to the future tenure of the 5,200 U.S. troops still in Iraq, although it is believed they will remain in the country, at least for now. The president did make clear however that he doesn’t want to see the U.S. continue picking up the tab for the future security of the country. “These people are going to have to start doing a lot of their own work and they’re going to have to start paying for it because the United States cannot continue to be the policeman of the world,” he told reporters.

The comments on Wednesday, echo those he made a day earlier.

“We’re, right now, the policemen of the world and we’re paying for it,” the president told U.S. troops around the world, when he spoke to them on a conference call from the Oval Office on Christmas Day. 

“And we can be the policemen of the world, but other countries have to help us,” he said.

The invasion of Iraq has cost the United States almost 5,000 lives, and trillions of dollars, for no apparent gain. Those losses however pale in the face of the losses endured by Iraq in terms of lives, damage to property and infrastructure, and an almost complete meltdown of the country. Iraq today is a far more dangerous and volatile, and impoverished country than ever it was under former leader Saddam Hussein.