Posted on 08/31/2013 11:22:25 AM PDT by smoothsailing
Friday, August 30, 2013
By: Michael Graham
More than 70 years after the start of World War II, America has 100,000 troops stationed at bases in Germany and Japan. More than 50 years after the cease-fire in Korea, we have nearly 30,000 American military stationed there.
But in Iraq, where we toppled Saddam just a decade ago and oversaw three national elections, there isn’t a single American combat soldier left. A fact President Obama has repeatedly celebrated.
Now imagine the world today — the exploding Egypt, sarin-gas Syria, bombs-in-Benghazi world — if Obama had treated Iraq the way America treated Germany, Japan and Korea. Imagine the Middle East with a fully functioning U.S. military base on the border of Iran and Syria, able to project power right on Bashar Assad and the ayatollahs’ doorsteps.
Alas, we can only imagine …
Syria, as bad as it is, isn’t even close to the greatest foreign policy failure of the Obama administration. It’s a symptom of Obama’s abandonment of the region. And the high (low?) point of that policy was Obama’s decision to abandon the moderate, pro-Western citizens of Iraq to the extremists.
Obama’s withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq will be viewed by history as one of the greatest foreign policy blunders of all time.
Please don’t start the tired “Bush Lied, People Died” nonsense. Forget the faulty intelligence on Iraq’s WMD program. Even if you lie in bed at night sticking pins in your “W” voodoo doll, it’s irrational to ignore the pragmatic value of a U.S. military force in a U.S.-leaning Iraq in the heart of the mess that is Obama’s “Arab Spring” Middle East.
Having 10,000 trained, intelligence-gathering troops bolstering the flagging courage of timid (small “d”) democrats and rattling the nerves of despots and terrorists is a good thing — no matter how we got there. So why are they gone? War fatigue? We had plenty of that after World War II — but we’re still in Germany.
Americans didn’t exactly rally around the Korean conflict at the time, but even after that “forgotten war,” we’re spending about $7 billion a year to stay.
The costs of “Bush’s unfunded war”? An administration whose smallest annual deficit ($759 billion) is larger than the biggest one we’d ever seen before is hardly in the penny-pinching business.
No, we gave up this invaluable geo-strategic opportunity and abandoned Muslim moderates to the Islamists for the worst reason possible: Petty politics.
Because it was Bush, the war was bad. Because it was bad, the troops had to come home. Such is the juvenile “strategery” of the Smartest President Ever.
Only now, we’ve got the Obama administration going full “W,” arguing for U.S. military action against Syria without U.N. approval or — a line even Bush didn’t cross — congressional authority.
I remember when Joe Biden was throwing around the “I” word over talk like that. (“Impeachment,” although in Biden’s case it could easily be “Einstein” or “aisle.”)
As of Wednesday morning, the White House was leaking like a broken sieve that there was “no doubt” the Assad regime was responsible for the chemical weapons attack that slaughtered innocent children. And, therefore, military action was imminent.
By Thursday afternoon, we were being told that Obama “had not made a decision,” and liberal lapdogs like U.S. Sen. Liz Warren were unwilling even to say the president should make the case to Congress.
Who knows where we’ll be by the time you read this — inviting Assad to another swanky dinner with the Kerrys? Here’s what won’t change: The limited options we have, in part because we abandoned our hard-won place in Iraq as part of an unrealistic Obama hope that the troubles of the Middle East would just go away.
Listen to Michael Graham weekdays noon to 3 p.m. on BostonHeraldRadio.com or follow him on Twitter
@IAMMGraham.
There. Fixed it.
Bing!
BINGO!
I’d disagree. Obama ought to be impeached for his abuses of power (IRS, et al), but the reason we’re out of Iraq is Maliki did not want us interfering with his rule and declined to sign a SOFA, without which our people are sitting ducks. It’s one thing to be partisan, but Graham is simply rewriting history here. The problem with neocons like Graham is that he actually thinks the Iraqi war was good for the US, $1T spent and 5K dead GI’s later. In reality, it was a disaster. The Iraq war gave us the overwhelming Democratic majorities that led to Obamacare.
We don’t need a foothold in the Middle East except perhaps in Israel.
Events there are best handled with quick in and out strikes.
Saddam should have died in 1991 followed by our quick exit, and an abandonment of policies promising to protect smaller players in return for their not maintaining their own militaries.
Just why did we attack Saddam in 1991...What was so great about Kuwait?
President Bush left office with American military bases surrounding Iran. President Obama gave away our strategic positions in Iraq and Afghanistan without getting anything in return. When the inevitable war with Iran comes, we will rue the day with blood and maimed soldiers. The only land approach to Iran that remains is via Turkey. Given Turkey’s refusal to support the Iraq invasion, this route is iffy at best. Iranian supply routes to Russia are now distant and more secure.
We had secured treaties with Kuwait promising to protect them in exchange for them not militarising during and in the wake of the Iran-Iraq war.
When Iraq invaded the first idiot Bush fully intended to renig on our treaties,but the house of Saud with which we had made the same bargain was scared shitless. The Saudis arranged footage of the Iraqi looting of Kuwait to be broadcast woworldwide through Turner’s then fledgling CNN. The move was successful and both Bush and congress were shamed into honoring our treaties with Kuwait.
I was with second MEF. All of this somewhat lowered our view of the CIC at the time.
When the Saudis say “Jump” we say “How High?”
“...but the reason we’re out of Iraq is Maliki did not want us interfering with his rule and declined to sign a SOFA...”
This is correct, but you’re forgetting that WE were the big dog in Iraq, not Maliki. The fact that Obama could not negotiate anything in return for our exit simply underscores the depth of the president’s diplomatic and strategic failure.
We agree that Iraq was a disaster, but once committed and paid for, shouldn’t we have “sold it” for as much gain as we could get?
No.
When the Voters are roused to throw politicians out of power they acquiesce.
Through CNN, the Saudis bypassed diplomatic channels and made a direct appeal to the world populace. Images of life support equipment from hospitals being trucked back to Iraq whilst the people who had been hooked up to it spoke more eloquently than political speeches.
Thanks smoothsailing.
“Events there are best handled with quick in and out strikes.”
I know Iran is not technically part of the Middle East, but we often lump it in with the Arab world. Do you really think we’re going to dismantle Iran’s nuclear weapons infrastructure with quick in-and-out strikes? One bomb and our foothold in Israel is gone. Where would that leave us?
Nope. Maliki was the big dog. As soon as we decided they were gonna hold elections, they ran the place. There was no way al Qaeda was gonna beat the standing government. The question was how many casualties they were gonna take destroying al Qaeda. Thanks to us, fewer Iraqis died. I thought we should have left after we decided they were gonna rule themselves. Bush stuck it out because to bail would have meant making him look bad. The cost to us was astronomical, given the measly benefits.
“The problem with neocons like Graham...”
Obama is the problem, not Michael Graham.
Was Maliki a tough negotiator? Sure. But he wasn’t intractable. Obama had ample opportunity (over three years!) to get a new or extended SOFA. He couldn’t be bothered. It didn’t fit his leftist anti- Bush hatred and agenda. Iraq had to fail for Obama to be right about all his treasonous speechifying. For Obama, just letting the Bush-Maliki negotiated SOFA lapse was in his interest. That way he could blame both Bush and Maliki for any future failures.
Obama is a small minded petty man, and the deteriorating Iraqi state is on his head and on his watch and of his making.
What did he have to be tough about? He ran the country, not us. It's not as if he was ever our puppet. We took no Iraqi assets to pay for our operations there. He got tons of aid, we sent GI's to do the job Iraqis should be doing for themselves and we provided protection from any adversary who might think of Iraq as a useful addition to their existing territory. Ultimately, it was for Maliki to sign up for an extension to the sweet deal we had for him. Instead, he decided having US troops in-country would interfere with his policy priorities. He was right. It would be difficult for Iraq to help Assad resupply with GI's still in Iraq.
Ultimately, we are out of Iraq because Iraqis elected a bunch of anti-American pols. I am actually pleased that we are out of there. We are not only saving money - we are not losing a few hundred GI's a year fighting Sunni troglodytes. We should have left way before we spent $1T and lost 5K GI's there. Nothing wrong with a Roman-style punitive expedition every so often. But Bush had to do his nation-building exercise, despite disavowing it while campaigning against Gore.
I never said quick.
I implied that rebuilding after the job is accomplished when there is no cultural congruence is counter productive.
Had we pulled out of Saudi Arabia in late 1991 as we should have then the picture would likely be much more in our favor now (though millions of Saudis would have died defending their country, and the west might have gone in to get it back for them) because left to themselves the Islamic world has always worn itself out with internecine warfare. We need to stop preventing that.
Reagan was a smooth political operator. He disengaged from Lebanon after the Marine barracks bombing. No point getting embroiled in a Lebanese civil war after the Pallies were escorted out. Dubya should have learned the same lesson and exited the country after Saddam was captured. Instead, by staying in Iraq and subjecting our guys to attrition warfare resulting in thousands of body bags, he plunged the GOP into a political quagmire that provided the Democratic majorities necessary for Obamacare. What I find sad is that (1) a guy this obtuse was the GOP candidate in 2000, (2) we managed to nominate even more obtuse people in 2008 and 2012 and (3) the Democratic candidates were much worse than these bozos. Every single time a Freeper pipes up about not wanting to vote for the lesser of two evils, I laugh. Because that’s all we’ve been doing for the last 100 years. Even Reagan came out for amnesty.
We were in Iraq because Saddam 1. gassed his people 2. was threatening to aid al queda & 3. the free flow of oil was being threatened.
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