Posted on 09/22/2013 8:36:02 AM PDT by Pan_Yan
On December 18, 2011, the last convoy of US soldiers pulled out of Iraq, ending nearly nine years of war that left almost 4,500 American troops and tens of thousands of Iraqis dead.
Marking the end of the combat mission in a speech at Fort Bragg (the same location where George W. Bush had declared war in 2003), President Barack Obama emphasized repeatedly that he was fulfilling his 2008 campaign pledge of an Iraq pull-out, while praising the courage of American soldiers and vowing that Iraqi forces were prepared to assume responsibility for their country’s security.
“Of course,” he noted, “violence will not end.... Extremists will continue to set off bombs, attack Iraqi civilians and try to spark sectarian strife.”
...
Yet Obama failed miserably in his attempt (if ever it was sincere) to forge a deal with the newly elected, fragile Iraqi government to maintain a residual US troop presence in Iraq. The agreement fell apart over the technicality of providing legal immunity to American soldiers, hardly an insurmountable impasse, one might have thought.
Since then, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has filled the power vacuum by consolidating his rule. He has eliminated his leading Sunni rivals and tightened his control over Iraq’s security services. Maliki has repeatedly violated the terms of the so-called Erbil agreement, which was meant to preserve the rights of Sunni and Kurdish communities.
In parallel, Iraq has descended progressively into chaos. This year alone, approximately 5,000 Iraqis have died in principally Sunni-on-Shi’ite terror attacks, with a recent surge in violence killing upwards of 1,000 Iraqis each month. Hardly a day goes by without multiple attacks being perpetrated throughout the country, as the domestic carnage there proceeds unabatedly.
(Excerpt) Read more at jpost.com ...
+1.
didn’t take the five years I predicted for Iraq to fall apart.
The influence neo-cons have wielded in foreign policy has been an unqualified disaster for the Republican Party. and conservatism in general. Without Iraq, there is no 2006 Democrat takeover of the House and Senate, and ultimately no Barack Obama.
Yup, deja vu all over again.
What about the 5,000 Us service members still in Iraq? The attacks on their bases will ramp up now that the government has lost what little control they had.
Yes, it was. Obama merely carried out the SOFA Bush had negotiated.
Well, what you were criticized for in 2003 is today’s conventional wisdom-—and manifestly obvious to anyone who has a shred of intellectual honesty.
Yes, thank you. Kuwait is a British oil company with a flag and had been part of Basra from the beginning of the Ottoman Empire. The U.S. Ambassador, April Glaspie, was right when she initially told Saddam the U.S. had no position on Arab-Arab border disputes. That should have been and should still be the official position of U.S. foreign policy regarding the Middle East.
Welcome to the mid-east. There are no good guys, there are only bad guys that like us and bad guys that don’t. It’s a pick your poison place. If they didn’t have oil the world would fence it off Escape From New York style and go on with our lives.
The Saudis got us into that war, they knew Saddam was about to set his sights on them.
Yup, deja vu all over again.
What about the 5,000 Us service members still in Iraq? The attacks on their bases will ramp up now that the government has lost what little control they had.
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No reason to believe that the ‘greatest SOS ever wasn’t speaking for the admin when she queried:
“WHAT DOES IT MATTER”?
So, just being a reasonable thinker, “THEY” probably have the same mind set here.
Iraq was lost by the Spring of 2004.
Everything since has been pure waste.
Bush is as much at fault as Obama. The outcome of his mushy internationalism was all too predictable, and now we will reap the whirlwind.
That'll do. The Brits understood the concept of giving the wogs a whiff of the grape.
I was dead set against the first one. We told Saddam he could do whatever he wanted not thinking he wanted more than they thought he wanted.
The Saudis were for the first war in Iraq, but they were against the second one. They didn’t want us to liberate the shiites. Now shiites and sunnis are killing each other and I’m supposed to cry about that?
Sure seems that way...
Somehow, in the last few decades, they’ve lost their touch.
As have we.
Yes. Used to be, when somebody went to war, it was all-in. It seems we never do that any more. “Pin-Pricks” from a bunch of pin-pr**s, if you know what I mean....
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