That's actually a pretty interesting statement. That's about as close as a political creature such as Petraeus can get to naming names without winding up in Fort Marcy Park with an unexplained bullet to the head, and it turns out he really doesn't have to. Undone, indeed; yes, it was, and by whom?
Let us review. When 0bama took office (1) the war in Iraq was over, (2) there was a new, popularly-elected government, (3) al Qaeda in Iraq was in hiding or dead, and (4) we had combat troops sufficient to the need staged in existing bases. Six years later, (1) the war is back on, (2) the Iraqi government has denied a SOFA and managed to devolve to tribal irrelevance, (3) al Qaeda in Iraq lives again in the form of ISIS, and (4) we're scrambling to throw an inadequate number of troops into a war zone with impossible ROE and the pretense that they're going to do security at the embassy, which incidentally was just the recipient of a mortar attack.
If that is not a thoroughly damning litany of failure I cannot imagine what would make it worse short of complete abandonment of the embassy staff under fire, and we know from Benghazi just how very capable the current administration is of doing precisely that. Pray for the troops.
Thanks for posting your excellent summary of Iraq before Obozo and and after Obozo.
“Some of the very hard work we did to help re-establish the fabric of Iraqi society — to bring the Sunni Arabs back into Iraqi society and give them an incentive to support the new Iraq rather than to oppose it — was undone.”
That’s actually a pretty interesting statement. That’s about as close as a political creature such as Petraeus can get to naming names without winding up in Fort Marcy Park with an unexplained bullet to the head, and it turns out he really doesn’t have to. Undone, indeed; yes, it was, and by whom?
Let us review. When 0bama took office (1) the war in Iraq was over, (2) there was a new, popularly-elected government, (3) al Qaeda in Iraq was in hiding or dead, and (4) we had combat troops sufficient to the need staged in existing bases. Six years later, (1) the war is back on, (2) the Iraqi government has denied a SOFA and managed to devolve to tribal irrelevance, (3) al Qaeda in Iraq lives again in the form of ISIS, and (4) we’re scrambling to throw an inadequate number of troops into a war zone with impossible ROE and the pretense that they’re going to do security at the embassy, which incidentally was just the recipient of a mortar attack.
If that is not a thoroughly damning litany of failure I cannot imagine what would make it worse short of complete abandonment of the embassy staff under fire, and we know from Benghazi just how very capable the current administration is of doing precisely that. Pray for the troops.