{"id":6897,"date":"2014-01-09T11:15:50","date_gmt":"2014-01-09T19:15:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=6897"},"modified":"2014-01-09T11:15:50","modified_gmt":"2014-01-09T19:15:50","slug":"the-fruit-of-obamas-abandonment-of-iraq","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-fruit-of-obamas-abandonment-of-iraq\/","title":{"rendered":"The Fruit of Obama’s Abandonment of Iraq"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Bruce S. Thornton \/\/\u00a0FrontPage Magazine<\/a>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Anbar province, the region of Iraq that 1,300 American soldiers died pacifying, is at risk of being taken over by al Qaeda jihadists and their affiliate, the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant. Fighting between Iraqi government forces and the jihadists is currently going on in Ramadi and Fallujah, the latter city the site in 2004 of the bloodiest battle of the Iraq War. If the Iraqi government fails to retake the city and push back against the jihadist \u201cal Qaedastan\u201d fiefdom now forming in eastern Iraq and western Syria, the American hard-fought victory in Fallujah will be the emblem of how once again an incompetent administration snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, with repercussions for the whole region.<\/p>\n

The debacle in Iraq, of course, has many causes. The dysfunctions of tribal cultures and Islam\u2019s theology of violence\u2013\u2013papered over by a national identity imposed from without and indifferent to the religious, regional, ethnic, and tribal fault lines of the region\u2013\u2013ensured that absent a ruthless strongman to keep order, violence would explode between sectarian and tribal rivals.\u00a0 For the same reasons, the misguided American attempt to create liberal democracy in a country and culture with few of the preconditions for it was doomed to fail, and as a result\u00a0sour the American people on any more involvement in a region of indiscriminate violence and ingratitude towards those who had liberated the Iraqi people from a psychopath like Hussein.<\/p>\n

Yet despite all that,\u00a0in 2011 Iraq still had a chance to establish some sort of ordered government, as long as enough American forces were on hand to help keep order\u00a0and impose mind-concentrating violence upon those who disrupted it, and to prod Prime Minister Maliki to govern like the leader of a nation rather than as the chief of a sectarian gang. And here is where the blame lands on Obama, for failing to negotiate a status-of-forces agreement with the Iraqi government that would have left 10,000-15,000 American troops\u00a0in the country, and then pulling all U.S. forces out of the country in December 2011. Eager for the political advantage that accrued to claiming he \u201cended\u201d the war and \u201cbrought the boys home,\u201d Obama did not put Maliki\u2019s feet to the fire and get the agreement. Nor did he show leadership and explain to the American people that despite their war-weariness, the 8 years of sacrifice would be wasted if that investment in blood and resources was not protected by continued American involvement. This failure created a vacuum in which foreign jihadists and revanchist Shiites ignited a firestorm of suicide bombings, massacres, and now the full-scale operations in Anbar.<\/p>\n

The fallout of the failure in Iraq, however, has serious consequences beyond that country. It is emblematic of the region-wide bungling and inconsistency that have plagued this administration and its criminally mediocre Secretaries of State.\u00a0From his first day in office, Obama projected to the world doubt about America\u2019s goodness, guilt over its alleged historical crimes, and eagerness to sit down with any thug and dictator who made a pretense of diplomatic engagement and help him \u201cembrace a new era of engagement based on mutual interests and mutual respect,\u201d as he announced at the U.N.<\/p>\n

His actions have been equally inept, based as they have been on his calculation of political advantage, and his reflexive blame-America internationalism. Having campaigned on the claim that Iraq was a \u201cdumb\u201d war of choice, while Afghanistan was the \u201cgood\u201d war, he was compelled to send a \u201csurge\u201d of troops to that country in 2009, only to undercut that effort by announcing a date-certain withdrawal after 2014. In 2011 he \u201clead from behind\u201d as NATO forces exceeded their U.N. mandate and overthrew Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi, leaving behind a failed state teeming with jihadist outfits, several of which in 2012 cooperated in murdering with impunity a U.S. ambassador and 3 other Americans in Benghazi. In 2011 he helped push out Egyptian strongman Hosni Mubarak, and threw U.S. support behind the genocidal Muslim Brotherhood. Once they bungled the country into another revolution, Obama continued to plump for the Brothers, his Secretary of State John Kerry hectoring the military regime about killing terrorists, and scolding them about \u201cthe need for an inclusive political process across the political spectrum,\u201d diplo-babble designed to cover up the disaster brought about by supporting terrorists worse than the deposed Mubarak, and then seeing the Egyptian people turn on them and the U.S.<\/p>\n

And don\u2019t forget the vanishing \u201cred lines\u201d in Syria and failure to act decisively when American support had a chance to topple Bashar al Assad without arming the fanatic jihadists now running the resistance. Or the showpiece of his ineptitude, the unrequited courtship of Iran, and the farcical on-going discussions aimed at talks to set further meetings to discuss getting Iran to promise to slow down its enrichment of uranium. Meanwhile John Kerry is hiding behind the Arab-Israeli \u201cpeace process\u201d that has evolved into a diplomatic form of obsessive-compulsive disorder, a repetition of actions that have no purpose other than their performance. This futile \u201cpeace-processing,\u201d John Bolton\u00a0points out<\/a>, \u201cincurs what economists call \u2018opportunity costs\u201d\u2013\u2013namely, the lost opportunity to concentrate on other issues of greater importance or where there are better chances for progress.\u201d<\/p>\n

Indeed, America under Obama has become a minor player in the Middle East, incapable of protecting its interests. Afghanistan promises to go the way of Iraq, slipping back under the baleful influence of the Taliban after we leave. The Benghazi murders are still unpunished, or even honestly explained, tarnishing our prestige and suggesting that killing Americans has no price. Al Qaeda and its affiliated jihadists are rampaging through the region from Mali to Yemen, and taking the lead in the war against Bashar al Assad. And Iran continues to spin the centrifuges as speedily as it spins our terminally incompetent negotiator Wendy Sherman, who earned her position by negotiating North Korea\u2019s Kim Jong Il\u2013\u2013whom she once said \u201cappears ready to make landmark commitments\u201d\u2013\u2013into a nuclear bomb.<\/p>\n

The failure in Iraq, however, at this point is much more serious than these others blunders. The country itself is one of the largest in the Middle East, with a population of 32 million. It possesses the world\u2019s fifth largest oil reserves. It has a majority Shiite population, making it a natural ally of neighboring Iran, and a potential supporter of that country\u2019s regional hegemonic ambitions. Iraq is the test case of what an American commitment of lives and money can\u2013\u2013or in this case, can\u2019t\u2013\u2013 achieve at a cost of $1 trillion, 4500 dead, and another 32,000 wounded.<\/p>\n

If the U.S., after spending so much money and lives, fails to ensure that a country so geographically and economically important remains a viable state and a supporter of our foreign policy aims, then the possibility that we can influence the region and protect our own interests and security becomes more and more remote. That failure will confirm most dramatically the decline of our prestige, and the retreat of American power already evident throughout the region, as once-major allies like Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Israel are pursuing strategies and alliances that do not depend or our reliability, while countries hostile to our interests, particularly Iraq and Russia, are already increasing their presence in the region. For that outcome Barack Obama will have to shoulder much of the blame.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Bruce S. Thornton \/\/\u00a0FrontPage Magazine\u00a0 Anbar province, the region of Iraq that 1,300 American soldiers died pacifying, is at risk of being taken over by al Qaeda jihadists and their affiliate, the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[126,22],"tags":[72,12,1033,1040,1080,442,88,1016,95],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-1Nf","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":4648,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/high-noon-on-june-30\/","url_meta":{"origin":6897,"position":0},"title":"High Noon on June 30?","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 29, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson The Oregonian Pessimism surrounds the proposed June 30th\u00a0transfer from the American-led coalition authority to the Iraqi interim government. Critics, left and right, fear that we are ram-rodding democracy down the throats of Iraqis. President Al-Yawer and his reformers are a fragile bunch, we are constantly warned.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "June 2004"","block_context":{"text":"June 2004","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2004\/june-2004\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3283,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/iraq-round-three\/","url_meta":{"origin":6897,"position":1},"title":"Iraq, Round Three","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 7, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Policy Review A review of\u00a0Moment of Truth in Iraq: How a New \u2018Greatest Generation\u2019 of American Soldiers is Turning Defeat and Disaster into Victory and Hope\u00a0by Michael Yon and\u00a0Tell Me How This Ends: General David Petraeus and the Search For a Way Out of Iraq\u00a0by Linda\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Reviews"","block_context":{"text":"Reviews","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/opinion\/reviews\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4558,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-power-of-will-winning-still-matters\/","url_meta":{"origin":6897,"position":2},"title":"The Power of Will: Winning Still Matters","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 29, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online The terrorists cannot win either a conventional or an asymmetrical war against the United States, should it bring its full array of assets to the struggle. Indeed, the Middle East, for all its revenue from inflated oil prices, has a smaller economy than\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "October 2004"","block_context":{"text":"October 2004","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2004\/october-2004\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3517,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/hope-yet-for-iraq\/","url_meta":{"origin":6897,"position":3},"title":"Hope Yet for Iraq","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 15, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Iraq for most Americans is now a toxic subject \u2014 best either ignored or largely evoked to blame someone for something in the past. Any visitor to Iraq can see that the American military cannot be defeated there, but also\u00a0is puzzled over exactly\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "October 2007"","block_context":{"text":"October 2007","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2007\/october-2007\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4705,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-terrible-arithmetic\/","url_meta":{"origin":6897,"position":4},"title":"The Terrible Arithmetic","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 28, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Private Papers There is a certain number of Iraqi terrorists that either need to give up, reconsider their militancy, leave the country,\u00a0or be killed\u00a0for there to be peace and the emergence of a consensual government. Given the fiery sermons of al Sadr, the cadres of Baathist\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "May 2004"","block_context":{"text":"May 2004","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2004\/may-2004\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3658,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/beyond-iraq\/","url_meta":{"origin":6897,"position":5},"title":"Beyond Iraq","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 2, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services The threat from radical Islamic terrorists will not vanish when President Bush leaves office, or if funds for the Iraq war are cut off in 2008. A frequent charge is that we are bringing terrorists to Iraq. 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