With no patriotic parades and little fanfare on either side of the Atlantic Ocean, the Iraq War is done.
On Dec. 15, the Iraq War ended after eight years and 273 days.
After the war that took almost nine years, 4,487 American lives and more than $800 billion, Americans didn't celebrate with raised flags or iconic folk songs as they did with the conclusions of past wars.
"Increasingly, the American public turned against the war toward the end," said David Hedge, a UF political science professor.
He said the war was more of an issue seven years ago than it was even three years ago.
"Now, the Iraq War isn't so much in the political arena," Hedge said.
He said he guesses Americans looking back will have a negative view of the war, just like those who lived through the 1960s and ‘70s view the Vietnam War.
"This war is seen as the same quagmire as Vietnam, where we pursued the wrong foreign policies for the wrong reasons," Hedge said.
Some students have strong opinions about the Iraq War.
"It's still not completely over," said Rebecca Fonseca, a 20-year-old health science junior at UF.
She said her uncle, a 20-year chaplain in the military, missed Christmas and his first granddaughter's first birthday this year because he was deployed in Afghanistan.
Fonseca said she doesn't think the war is over if there are people still serving in combat overseas. She said Iraq was only one facet of the larger conflict.
Matt Inman, a 24-year-old mechanical engineering graduate second-year at UF, said the war's ending is a big deal.
"It's strange because we weren't fighting a nation," Inman said.
He said he thinks it is interesting more people don't serve in the military.
The reason more don't serve in the military is probably because the college population is so great, he said.
"The military isn't as common an option as it was back then," Inman said.
