Another Obama failure.
After 9 years of American sacrifice in Iraq Obama has announced he will withdraw ALL our troops from the country. He tried to frame it as a campaign promise from 2008 but now we know that isn’t the reason. The reason is due to his complete failure to negotiate with the Iraqi’s:
President Obama’s announcement on Friday that all American troops would leave Iraq by the end of the year was an occasion for celebration for many, but some top American military officials were dismayed by the announcement, seeing it as the president’s putting the best face on a breakdown in tortured negotiations with the Iraqis.
And for the negotiators who labored all year to avoid that outcome, it represented the triumph of politics over the reality of Iraq’s fragile security’s requiring some troops to stay, a fact everyone had assumed would prevail.
…This month, American officials pressed the Iraqi leadership to meet again at President Talabani’s compound to discuss the issue. This time the Americans asked them to take a stand on the question of immunity for troops, hoping to remove what had always been the most difficult hurdle. But they misread Iraqi politics and the Iraqi public. Still burdened by the traumas of this and previous wars, and having watched the revolutions sweeping their region, the Iraqis were unwilling to accept anything that infringed on their sovereignty.
Acutely aware of that sentiment, the Iraqi leadership quickly said publicly that they would not support legal protections for any American troops. Some American officials have privately said that pushing for that meeting — in essence forcing the Iraqis to take a public stand on such a controversial matter before working out the politics of presenting it to their constituents and to Parliament — was a severe tactical mistake that ended any possibility of keeping American troops here past December.
Because of this failure we will not be allowed a orderly transition, which threatens the sacrifice made by almost 4,500 American who gave their lives, and the thousands upon thousands who served over there. Not to mentions the billions of dollars spent. Why? Because he couldn’t successfully negotiate with those who still want us there.
Amazing.
But is it just a negotiating failure?
Isn’t there some kind of election coming up soon?
And now with no American presence in Iraq, Iran will have a completely free hand.
If there is one constant of American military history it is that the longer our troops stay in a country the better the prospects of a successful outcome. Think of Germany, Italy, Japan or South Korea. Conversely when U.S. troops rush for the exits hard-won wartime gains can quickly evaporate. Think of the post-Civil War South, post-World War I Germany, post-1933 (and post-1995) Haiti, post-1972 Vietnam, or, more recently, post-1983 Lebanon and post-1993 Somalia.
See author page