Allah:
It’s not some shadowy anonymous source from the peshmerga’s middle management who’s claiming this, do note. It’s Nechirvan Barzani, the Kurds’ prime minister. That’s the second time in four days that a major foreign official has accused Obama’s America of being a fickle, disengaged ally.
Thoughtfully considering the Kurds’ offer and declining so as not to get sucked back into Iraq would be one thing, but that’s not what happened according to Barzani. Apparently, we simply didn’t respond.
The Kurds became especially alarmed at signs that ISIS had already formed a shadow government in Mosul, weeks before initiating the carefully preplanned takeover of the city 10 days ago. According to the same Kurdish military sources it was accomplished with ease and without serious fighting after local Iraqi commanders agreed to withdraw.
The prime minister of the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region, Nechirvan Barzani, says he warned Baghdad and the United States months ago about the threat ISIS posed to Iraq and the group’s plan to launch an insurgency across Iraq. The Kurds even offered to participate in a joint military operation with Baghdad against the jihadists.
Washington didn’t respond—a claim that will fuel Republican charges that the Obama administration has been dangerously disengaged from the Middle East. Iraqi Prime Minister al-Maliki dismissed the warnings, saying everything was under control.
The Kurds’ intelligence head, Lahur Talabani, says he handed Washington and London detailed reports about the unfolding threat. The warnings “fell on deaf ears,” he says.
Those ears weren’t really deaf, though. Remember, even American intel officials were sounding alarms about ISIS last year. Obama knew the threat existed. He just declined to address it, either because he thought there was nothing the U.S. could do to stop ISIS or because he badly misjudged the Iraqi army’s willingness and ability to repel the jihadis themselves. I’ve got to believe it’s the latter; if it’s the former, that America was powerless to damage ISIS, why on earth is Kerry hinting about U.S. airstrikes now when ISIS is stronger and richer than it was before? Logically, the time to start bombing was before they became entrenched in Mosul and started eyeing Baghdad, not after.
There’s a third possibility: Maybe O knew ISIS was a major threat, thought a joint U.S./Iraqi/Kurdish operation could do something to neutralize it, but decided he wasn’t going to get involved in Iraq again unless and until the country faced an existential crisis — and even then, he’d do the bare minimum. (Says one Special Ops vet of the 300 troops being sent in, “These guys are being given an impossible mission. What are they going to do? Host a dinner party?”) His genesis as a national figure was his opposition to military action in Iraq; he’s not going to spend his last two years as president cleaning up a mess he didn’t personally make, whatever responsibility his country may have had in making it. Except that … he did help make this mess, whether he realizes it or not. Read Peter Beinart’s indictment of O for refusing to do anything over the past five years to pressure the Iraqi government to reconcile with the Sunnis and Kurds. This is a guy who swept to office in 2008 promising that he’d use diplomacy and economic levers — “smart power” — to achieve America’s goals, yet when it came time to put a little diplomatic pressure on Maliki, he passed on every opportunity.
Obama confuses ”nipping something bad in the bud,” with his straw man, ”whack-a-mole.”
Apparently he also never learned that ”a stitch in time, saves nine.”
@Nanny G: No – you are forgetting that Obama is on ISIS’s side — the SOB was going to try to help ISIS overthrow Assad
When there is disengagement and disinterest, this is what happens. In politics, they call it “miscalculation”. In the military, we say “someone has f***** up”. Most obviously, it all points to Obama.
I think the answering machine said, “We can’t get to the phone right now because we are out golfing or raising funds for the Obama library. Please leave you phone number and we may try to get back with you someday!”
There are two conflicting interests here. The first one is doing what is best for the country’s strategic interests which is ensuring that our hard fought victory over there is maintained and that a pro-U.S. government exists in Iraq. The second is Obama’s political interests of him being able to claim he ended the war in Iraq and more broadly, that he “ended” GWOT.
What will be interesting is to see what Putin does. He could turn this into a very humiliating defeat for the U.S. Should he commit to helping Iraq rid itself of ISIS, he will make the U.S. look incompetent to the point of being inconsequential. It’ll make him essentially the new world leader. If he uses that as leverage to get together with the rest of the oil producers to form an anti-U.S. block that results in a big increase in oil prices to the U.S., it’ll be enough to cause our very fragile economy to come tumbling down. He can also use it as leverage to lure other countries out of our sphere of influence. The stakes here could be much larger than imagined.
Of COURSE they didn’t hear back, they didn’t put it in the paper. That’s where our DickTater finds out everything.
The Kurds are in deep trouble now. How they failed to realize that 0Muslim is pro ISIS is beyond comprehension.
The Iraq border (perimeter) was never secured and the inhabitants (combat and civilian) were never disarmed. This, of course, proves that a meaningful and lasting “victory” was never achieved (due to the incompetence and/or poor strategic planning on the part of our military and political leaders).
A “pro-U.S. government” in Iraq?
You’ve got to be kidding right?
Israel is just about the only “pro-U.S. government in the middle east. And even they aren’t that big on the us. Meanwhile, the post U.S. invasion government of Iraq has never been “pro-United States,” let alone trustworthy.
@FMB42:
There was a victory in that we did exactly what we said we were going to do- regime change. In the process we also defeated a stubborn insurgency, something many a world powers have failed at doing in the past. What wasn’t achieved was consolidating the gains we made and turning it into a lasting victory, i.e. securing the borders etc., as you point out.
Based on my two tours there I’d say a good part of the population that I dealt with was pro-U.S. Iraq lost more people helping us fight GWOT than any other country. That counts for something in my book. The Maliki government, while it obviously has serious faults, is no Saddam Hussein, Assad, or Iranian government. It’s not supporting anti-U.S. terrorist groups. It’s not threatening to blow up Israel. It’s not threatening any of its other neighbors. Is it a Britain? No. Is it an Iran or a Syria? No.
As to your first sentence, I agree that Obama can’t be trusted when dealing with ISIS or radical Islamic terrorism. The gains they have made on his watch have put the momentum on their side.
I respect your views and service AV.
However, the fact remains that the Iraq border was never secured and the combatants and inhabitants within (good, bad, and indifferent) were never disarmed. Therefore, what’s happening today is exactly what can be expected of such a poor strategy. Just think of what Germany and Japan would be like today if the U.S. used the same incompetent “no-win” strategies on them as it has on Iraq…
My opinion is that you shouldn’t wage war if you’re not prepared and/or willing to do what needs to be done to win it.
@FMB42:
I agree 100%. I even consider WWII to be a partial victory given that Stalin was left in power. We didn’t liberate Europe from tyranny, only part of it. Ditto for the East given that totalitarian governments weren’t eliminated from there either. They just changed hands like in Europe. I’m afraid that not finishing what we started goes well past Iraq and applies to GWOT as a whole.