Obama Fail : What is his policy in Iraq?

What is being largely overlooked is this Iraq conflict is the direct result of other Obama policies, eg, overthrowing Mubarek in Egypt, Khaddafi in Libya and trying to overthrow Assadd in Syria. Overthrowing Saddam in Iraq was a terrible mistake in hindsight, but what was done was done. Obama/Clinton bumbled in with their pro-islamist pro-muslin brotherhood policy and this is what we got.

ps. I am continually mystified about the "US corporations" "draining" oil from Iraq. Are these HuffPo idiots claiming we somehow stole it? That's a total lie. In fact, we should have helped ourselves to their oil and would have been totally justified in doing so. Why was it the repsonsibility of the American taxpayer to rebuild Iraq and give them a buncj of weapons they could abandon for ISIS?
 
Dick Cheney(who in their right mind says my name is Richard, but I prefer to be called DICK), anyway Dick is not being helpful. Please ride off into the Wyoming sunset and STFU. All you're doing is giving the leftist tribe fuel and now we once again have to act as if Obama just took office yesterday.
Whatever mistakes were made, Obama has had nearly 6 years to do something about it. Obama's actions and/or inactions have done nothing but pour fuel on the fire. THAT is where the focus needs to be. It's 2014, not 2003. How far back shall we go? The place has been a disaster for decades.
 
CaptainObvious said:
Dick Cheney(who in their right mind says my name is Richard, but I prefer to be called DICK), anyway Dick is not being helpful. Please ride off into the Wyoming sunset and STFU. All you're doing is giving the leftist tribe fuel and now we once again have to act as if Obama just took office yesterday.
Whatever mistakes were made, Obama has had nearly 6 years to do something about it. Obama's actions and/or inactions have done nothing but pour fuel on the fire. THAT is where the focus needs to be. It's 2014, not 2003. How far back shall we go? The place has been a disaster for decades.
More...

Yes, totally. Cheney has nothing of value to add here. He was dead wrong and now is dragging us into a desperate attempt to revise history.
 
So the question remains, where did Obama fail regarding Iraq? The left wants to focus on the failures of the Bush administration, of which there were many. The hard right wants to focus on Obama while ignoring that it was their inability to read the intel and then successfully execute a winning war strategy. Both sides have their points, but all are irrelevant now.
We are now in a position where we have nothing but bad choices to make. We can do nothing and watch everything we paid for in both lives and money go down the drain, or we can once again enter the region militarily and try to administrate some stability. Both options suck and will ultimately come back to haunt us regardless of what we do or don't do.
All that remains is will we learn something. So to the question, where did Obama fail? Why was he asking permission in 2011? Permission to leave 10,000 troops behind. We shouldn't have been asking anything. We should have been telling them, this is how it plays out. There's nothing to negotiate, nothing to discuss. Don't like it Mr. Maliki? Well here's a hollow point with your name on it. Next!
Should we find ourselves in a similar position at some future point, it would behoove us to grow a pair of balls.
 
CaptainObvious said:
Both sides have their points, but all are irrelevant now.
More...
Actually it matters greatly because those who fail to learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them. Which is why the military conducts AARs.

No question that Obama ultimately made this fail by ignoring his commanders on the ground who wanted a residual force of roughly 20,000. That was avoidable without hindsight.

There's also no question that our vital national interests should drive what we do next. But that's not likely to happen. Because instead of protecting out vital national interests guided by the lessons of history, we're playing toxic politics and revisionist history. And we're so dysfunctional that I don't think we'll pull our heads out of our asses until after we've been nuked.
 
This has been a managed political war from the start. Early on, Bush had the US stand down in Fallujah for a month for no real reason, I think it was some UN bullshit. Who wants to fight wars that are managed by the UN? So after a month for the Iraqis to fortify we had a hall of a fight there when we easily could have rolled up the place in a few days. That's just a head's up on how things work. I lost interest in the whole mess at that point, 'sides, if the same factions have been killing each other for 1400 years why try to make them stop now? I'll go with the former Gov. of Alaska on that mess: "let Allah handle it!"
 
Fractals 'R Us said:
This has been a managed political war from the start. Early on, Bush had the US stand down in Fallujah for a month for no real reason, I think it was some UN bullshit. Who wants to fight wars that are managed by the UN? So after a month for the Iraqis to fortify we had a hall of a fight there when we easily could have rolled up the place in a few days. That's just a head's up on how things work. I lost interest in the whole mess at that point, 'sides, if the same factions have been killing each other for 1400 years why try to make them stop now? I'll go with the former Gov. of Alaska on that mess: "let Allah handle it!"
More...

Our intervention, whether it is in Syria, Ukraine or Iraq, is justified only if vital US interests are at stake and if the Congress duly approves the use of force.

Liberals and a fair number of pretend conservatives seem to only want to intervene in situations where we have no vital interests. Nothing to gain and plenty to lose, at least for the poor joes who get sent in there to risk their lives so some pol can have a talking point.

I am sick of being lectured by people about the so-called "lessons of history", which are said to dictate that we must confront evil everywhere it rears its head or risk world war later. History teaches no such thing. I can list dozens of counter examples.

The same neo-cons who demanded an attack on iran now want us to implicitly be allies with them against the sunni terrorists. We installed this Maliki character in Iraq. Now he is no good. Same with Karzi in Afghanistan. Maybe the real lesson is stay out of situations we have no business in or no understanding of.

The other obvious lesson of history is that peace and stability in the islamic middle east are brought about authoritarian governments. Egypt, Syria, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Saddam-ruled Iraq, Iran, et al, all were relatively stable under traditional arab strongmen rulers.

Of course that wasn't good enough for us. Bush and his cluless neo-con advisors wanted to force western democracy on countries with no history or tradition of it. Obama went even further and openly supported islamist groups tied to al qaeda.

As a civilized western country hamstrung by various interantional conventions on the rules of war, we are singularly incapable of dealing with these insurgencies. Saddam would have surrounded Fallujah with artillery pieces and reduced it to rubble. Problem solved. We thought door to door fighting was a better option, with the predictable horrific causualties. Of course, none of our pampered philosopher king generals or preening pols was kicking in doors, so what did they care?
 
AAAintheBeltway said:
Our intervention, whether it is in Syria, Ukraine or Iraq, is justified only if vital US interests are at stake and if the Congress duly approves the use of force.

Liberals and a fair number of pretend conservatives seem to only want to intervene in situations where we have no vital interests. Nothing to gain and plenty to lose, at least for the poor joes who get sent in there to risk their lives so some pol can have a talking point.

I am sick of being lectured by people about the so-called "lessons of history", which are said to dictate that we must confront evil everywhere it rears its head or risk world war later. History teaches no such thing. I can list dozens of counter examples.

The same neo-cons who demanded an attack on iran now want us to implicitly be allies with them against the sunni terrorists. We installed this Maliki character in Iraq. Now he is no good. Same with Karzi in Afghanistan. Maybe the real lesson is stay out of situations we have no business in or no understanding of.

The other obvious lesson of history is that peace and stability in the islamic middle east are brought about authoritarian governments. Egypt, Syria, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Saddam-ruled Iraq, Iran, et al, all were relatively stable under traditional arab strongmen rulers.

Of course that wasn't good enough for us. Bush and his cluless neo-con advisors wanted to force western democracy on countries with no history or tradition of it. Obama went even further and openly supported islamist groups tied to al qaeda.

As a civilized western country hamstrung by various interantional conventions on the rules of war, we are singularly incapable of dealing with these insurgencies. Saddam would have surrounded Fallujah with artillery pieces and reduced it to rubble. Problem solved. We thought door to door fighting was a better option, with the predictable horrific causualties. Of course, none of our pampered philosopher king generals or preening pols was kicking in doors, so what did they care?
More...
+1
 
AAAintheBeltway said:
Our intervention, whether it is in Syria, Ukraine or Iraq, is justified only if vital US interests are at stake and if the Congress duly approves the use of force.

Liberals and a fair number of pretend conservatives seem to only want to intervene in situations where we have no vital interests. Nothing to gain and plenty to lose, at least for the poor joes who get sent in there to risk their lives so some pol can have a talking point.

I am sick of being lectured by people about the so-called "lessons of history", which are said to dictate that we must confront evil everywhere it rears its head or risk world war later. History teaches no such thing. I can list dozens of counter examples.

The same neo-cons who demanded an attack on iran now want us to implicitly be allies with them against the sunni terrorists. We installed this Maliki character in Iraq. Now he is no good. Same with Karzi in Afghanistan. Maybe the real lesson is stay out of situations we have no business in or no understanding of.

The other obvious lesson of history is that peace and stability in the islamic middle east are brought about authoritarian governments. Egypt, Syria, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Saddam-ruled Iraq, Iran, et al, all were relatively stable under traditional arab strongmen rulers.

Of course that wasn't good enough for us. Bush and his cluless neo-con advisors wanted to force western democracy on countries with no history or tradition of it. Obama went even further and openly supported islamist groups tied to al qaeda.

As a civilized western country hamstrung by various interantional conventions on the rules of war, we are singularly incapable of dealing with these insurgencies. Saddam would have surrounded Fallujah with artillery pieces and reduced it to rubble. Problem solved. We thought door to door fighting was a better option, with the predictable horrific causualties. Of course, none of our pampered philosopher king generals or preening pols was kicking in doors, so what did they care?
More...
While I think everything you said is correct, especially that we can't muster the will to do what has to be done.. the reality is this new spawn of AQ will, as sure as the Sun will set tonight, attack us. Would you not agree that stopping them from doing so is a vital US interest?

You can say invading iraq was a mistake and I can't disagree (in hindsight). You can say "winning hearts and minds" is a predictably ineffective way to fight a war, and i fully agree. But again, the reality is as soon as saddam was removed, iraq become the front in the war against AQ. And now that we left, they have reversed basically all the gains that our troops died for. I can't help but have a problem with that. I really don't give a shit about the politics of the ME or the thousand year old shia/sunni feud, they both suck. My care is also zero for international 'rules of war' and the wannabe supreme arbiter of right and wrong, the UN. To me this war was/is about revenge for 9/11, the most costly attack on US soil by a foreign power in the history of our nation. As of now, they're winning.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top