Today is the day when Democrats are touting at their convention all of President Obama’s foreign policy achievements. Iraq will be mentioned frequently but only in the context of “ending the war.” Of the endgame in Iraq, little will be said—and for good reason: By not achieving an accord to keep U.S. troops in Iraq past 2011 (for want of will on his own part, I would argue), President Obama has effectively abandoned this country where the U.S.—with the support of Obama’s own secretary of state and convention speaker John Kerry, among other Democratic heavyweights—made such a heavy commitment over the course of the past decade.
In The Daily Beast, Eli Lake speaks with one of those we left behind —Sheikh Ahamd Abu Risha, brother of the slain sheikh who started the Anbar Awakening that turned Sunnis against Al Qaeda and helped the U.S. to avert a looming defeat. Four years ago candidate Obama visited Iraq and told Abu Risha and other tribal leaders that the U.S. would never leave them in the lurch. Lake writes:
“President Obama said he would not forget all the sacrifices that were made,” he said. “Now we look back at that meeting and we think it was political propaganda. What he said, we don’t see it happening”….
He said U.S. military leaders assured him he would receive regular visits from senior figures and diplomats to discuss the relationship that began in Anbar back in 2006 and 2007. “There is no contact right now,” he said. “They don’t visit at all. Ever since the United States withdrew, we haven’t gotten anyone to visit.”
Why the lack of contact? Lake quotes Jim Jeffrey, the last US ambassador in Baghdad (a position currently unfilled), as follows:
Jeffrey, who left his post as ambassador at the end of May, said the meetings have not yet happened because without the U.S. military in Iraq it’s difficult for U.S. officials to travel to Anbar. “We have every intention of maintaining contact with the awakening and other people,” Jeffrey said. “We had several meetings after the military completed its withdrawal with tribal sheikhs from the greater Baghdad area, but it’s been hard to get people out to Anbar because of the security situation.”
No surprise, that lack of contact and travel; it was precisely what numerous observers, including me, expected would happen when U.S. troops would pull out. But State Department and administration spokesmen spent years assuring anyone who would listen that even with the troops gone, a mega-embassy relying on some 15,000 contractors could continue to carry on vital missions. Now the falsity of those claims has been starkly revealed: U.S. diplomats, devoid of military support for transportation, find it hard to get out of their own embassy in the old Green Zone, thus leaving the old Awakening leaders to find for themselves even as Prime Minister Maliki’s increasingly sectarian security forces increasingly persecute high-profile Sunnis including Vice President Tariq al Hashemi.
Having pulled our troops out, Obama has taken American influence out of Iraq too, giving the Iranians and their proxies a free hand. Thus, despite U.S. protests, the Maliki government is apparently allowing Iranian aircraft to overfly its air space to provide aid to the murderous Assad regime in Syria. The U.S. pullout has had other parlous consequences including allowing Al Qaeda in Iraq, once on the verge of annihilation, to stage a resurgence and to carry out fresh waves of bombings this year.
Iraq is not a geopolitical disaster, at least not yet; it is managing to muddle through in many years and even to increase oil production. But it is hard to avoid a sinking feeling that the Awakening leaders and our other allies in Iraq will not fare well in the years ahead in a country that is turning increasingly authoritarian under a hard-line Shiite leader. They have been abandoned just like the Hungarians, South Vietnamese, and other friends of America over the years. That is a part of the president’s record you won’t hear about at the convention.
I didn't hear much discussion on Iraq last week,by anyone. Oversight? LOL
Well Max,based on the underwheming response to your concerns,i'd find another rag to opine in.
Max's post brings to light, yet again, the fickle nature of our president and how his decisions cost lives, cost treasure, and cost the country its reputation. What foreign country can trust Mr. Obama? n nIraq cannot trust the U.S. Mr. Obama left Iraq and they are on their own. Can the Afghanis trust him? The U.S. is pulling out soon and then the Taliban will return. Any Afghani who expected help and long term commitment is thinking twice now. n nIt's no wonder our old friends are looking for new friends. America: Can she be trusted?
_Can she be trusted?__ nAsk South Vietnam around 1975
Max Boot, Commentary, and the Republicans in general, refuse to consider let alone understand the link between our eroding Iraq victory and Obama's war in Afghanistan. n nFirst our Progressives demanded the US concentrate on chasing al Qaeda and its hosts up and down the Hindu Kush. They hoped to divert our military focus from Iraq. That failed but the idea of using Afghanistan as a stratagem was not forgotten . n nWhen Obama won the 2007-08 Democratic primaries he did so as an anti-war dove against competitors who had largely supported the Iraq war. That summer however, his judgment, that Iraq was unwinnable and the surge would only exacerbate the debacle proved false. The candidate's national security polling, plummeted. His solution was to accuse the Republicans of neglecting Afghanistan. He would make it the central front in the war on terror, and give it all the combat battalion necessary, and win that fight. n nThat was for the hawkish vote and win an election. But why did that instinctual dove, on winning, keep his vow and blow the embers of Bush's sideshow into a blazing war? n nIt was again to appear strong on national security, to appease the hawks, to shut up the Republicans, to please the defense lobby. And for one additional reason. He banged the war drums in pursuit of the Taliban, to drown out the soft swish of our victory in Iraq, as it disappears down the drain. n nThat Iraq ultimately proves to be the fiasco he had early on predicted is important to Obama. Because he took a radical position. He opposed replacing the mass murdering Saddam and the fascist Baath with an elected govt. Moreover, he then demanded the US cede the battlefield to an insurgency that denounced freedom of religion, gender equality and democracy as hateful to God. It crashed exploding cars into civilian crowds. Never since the Nazis hanged democrats from meathooks had US fundamental principle been so nakedly challenged. To demand the US turn its back on that, indeed, flee, was an astonishing position for an American to take.The only possible justification, was the impossibility of winning such a fight. n nThat is what it is about. The president desires Iraq to unravel into a defeat, the defeat Obama had predicted and had wanted to spare the nation. n nThe pointless war in Afghanistan is the bellicose camouflage which allows Obama to fold his hands as our victory in Iraq dribbles away.
Good analysis,but how would Romney fit in here?
With Romney we would have an administration that does not have an active interest in seeing Iraq unravel completely.