In 2011, when Barack Obama oversaw the withdrawal of our troops from Iraq, he took full, 100% credit for doing so…and gave exactly no credit whatsoever to President Bush – the man who negotiated that troop withdrawal and formally agreed to it in November, 2008.
(To this day, I am certain, most people have no idea that the withdrawal agreement was President Bush\’s doing, not President Obama\’s. And this ignorance has, of course, been aided and abetted by an Accomplice Media, perfectly willing to give Mr. Obama credit for anything they can – even someone else\’s actions – while looking the other way at every one of his many failures, both big and small.)
When it came time for US troops to withdraw, however, our military leaders told President Obama that if we did not leave a residual force there to advise and train the Iraqis, this would all come apart. So, as the story goes, Mr. Obama proposed a force of 3,000 to 5,000 for just that purpose.
But, as the story continues, the Iraqi government (same one as today), rejected this idea. So Mr. Obama abandoned the idea and all troops came home.
That\’s a nicely wrapped little bundle, isn\’t it? We wanted them there, they said no, so we left. Just like an uninvited guest at a birthday party. Easy peasy.
The great H. L. Mencken had a saying about things like this: “There is always an easy solution to every human problem. Neat, plausible, and wrong”. I\’ll bet that, wherever Mencken is in eternity, when he finds out about Iraq, he will have a knowing smile on his face.
Here\’s a question for President Obama: If your country\’s armed forces liberated a country from its brutal, mass-murdering dictator, fought and died to make it safe for democracy, succeeded in creating a fledgling democratic state, agreed to leave afterwards, were told by the military that it was critically important to leave a small force in place – but the government which was in place only because of our military actions said no….
….Should you insist on leaving that force? Should you put every conceivable pressure on the head of state to leave that complement of troops in place? Should you make good and damn sure that the success of our efforts there would not summarily be tossed in a garbage can? That our brave men and women in uniform did not fight and die in vain?
Yes, part of the problem was Iraq\’s Maliki government. But the failure of President Obama and his administration to persuade, or if necessary force, that government to accept these conditions, is entirely on the head of Obama & Co.
It is this failure, borne either of incompetence or, very possibly, the fact that Mr. Obama – his military people\’ s exhortations notwithstanding – wanted them all out regardless of the consequences, that puts responsibility for the “nakba” (catastrophe) we are now seeing in Iraq squarely on his shoulders.
And, before ending this blog, may I point out that, at that time, we also had a Secretary of State?
Where was Hillary Clinton during these negotiations? Working on her book? Going to fundraisers and getting awards for her “competence”? What did she have to say about this?
It seems to me that the leading prospect for the Democrat presidential nomination in 2016 owes us all an explanation. Now.
I will end by pointing out that if Barack Obama had been something more than a ridiculous windbag regarding the “red line” he supposedly drew in Syria, this would not be happening regardless of how many residual troops we left in Iraq. More on that in a subsequent blog.
