I know many here are upset at the food quality at the Democrat Convention this past weekend, but there is an Al-Qaeda group beheading their way to Baghdad. This is why failure to get a SOFA in 2011 is an epic failure of President Obama. I wish Obama heard the words of the former president who said in 2007
“I know some in Washington would like us to start leaving Iraq now. To begin withdrawing before our commanders tell us we are ready would be dangerous for Iraq, for the region, and for the United States. It would mean surrendering the future of Iraq to al Qaeda. It would mean that we’d be risking mass killings on a horrific scale. It would mean we’d allow the terrorists to establish a safe haven in Iraq to replace the one they lost in Afghanistan. It would mean increasing the probability that American troops would have to return at some later date to confront an enemy that is even more dangerous.”
Now Obama is sending troops to protect the embassy in Baghdad and my guess, will start droning Al-Qaeda positions. hopefully, it’s not too little too late.
http://www.aei-ideas.org/2014/06/bush-warned-this-would-happen-in-iraq/
Donald Green says
Many of us foresaw this state of affairs even before one bomb fell in “shock and awe” in 2002. There was no al qaeda in Iraq then. Emails were sent to our politicians pleading to stay out of a country obviously enmeshed in tribal warfare. Any historical overview of that country would have shown the propensity for irrational hatred just below the surface. Saddam was a brutal dictator, but also a crazy glue that kept the country together. Women had rights, and education was prized. Hans Blix confidently predicted that no nuclear weapons would be found, and needed just 6 more months to be sure. The self designated “war president” George Bush ignored all reason, and plunged ahead fueled by the crazy neo-cons, and an expert propaganda machine. …..”From a marketing point of view you don’t introduce new products in August.”—White House Chief of Staff Andy Card on rollout of the war. Iraqis themselves have to make some hard choices, but our outside interference going back decades has only stopped any progress in that direction. We should stay out. Besides if Al Qaeda is not in Iraq, they will be somewhere else. If they gather in any numbers they can be dealt with. Our goal should be gaining support of countries so none will harbor such criminals.
danfromwaltham says
Not debating 2003, clearly that was a mistake and Saddam and his two sons should have remained in power and kept the torture chambers open, it was none of our business. I reject the utopia you described Iraq pre-2003 but get the larger point.
However, in 2011, Obama ignored the advise to obtain a SOFA and now thousands are being slaughtered unnecessarily. Then he mocks Romney for wanting to keep troops in Iraq during the 3rd debate, dismisses Romney’s assertion that Russia is our #1 geo-political foe, and makes a joke about playing battleship. It ain’t funny now, is it?
Just last week, Obama said there would be no combat troops in Iraq, now he is sending a few hundred as we speak. Par for the course with Obama.
Donald Green says
You want to move the starting point of history, so I’m game. You are mouthing the sentiments of Sen McCain. He thinks the conflict was largely settled after 2007 via the “surge.” However this was mainly an effort against Al Qaeda elements that here to fore did not exist in Iraq until after US forces invaded. It did not settle the Sunni/Shiite/Kurdish split induced by our intervention. In fact it strengthened it. El Maliki is not the only despot who was waiting in the wings to snuff out Sunni influence and make nice with Iran(Allawi, Chalabi). Those were even suppose to be on our side. Under Saddam there were no separate neighborhoods for Sunni and Shiite. They lived together, worked together, and, yes, married each other. There was an iron fisted tribal peace under Saddam’s dictatorship. Far from ideal, but Iraq still has not recovered to where it was before our invasion. We had the opportunity with inspectors on the ground and Saddam reluctantly complying to make a better transition to a more inclusive government, but Bush(sorry have to bring Mr. Bush back into the equation) squandered the opportunity. He chose a war of choice instead. So there was no peace generated by the “surge” just a diminishment of Al Qaeda. Our invasion created the present situation, and whether troops remained or left, the stage was set for the present conflict. Sunnis and Kurds were kept out of governmental power from its very beginnings. No amount of troops was going to fix that. In case you hadn’t noticed bombs were going off in Baghdad and elsewhere killing citizens by the “thousands” even with high US troop levels. The neocon selective history is not only annoying, it is wrong and dangerous. Look up the civilian casualties during the years 2003 to 2011 in Iraq and then tell me your assessment makes sense.
danfromwaltham says
But not the post surge. Clearly violence was way down, things were moving in a positive direction. Don’t take my word for it, just listen to Obama in 2008 when he said “OBAMA: ….There is no doubt that the violence is down and that is a testament to the troops that were sent and General Patraeus and Ambassador Crocker. I think that the surge has succeeded in ways that nobody anticipated, by the way, including President Bush and the other supporters….
IMO, the best course would have been to keep a small presence in Iraq, keep Maliki honest with the power sharing, and train and train the Iraqi troops. Also, we wouldn’t push Maliki to Iran.
Unfortunately, Obama didn’t listen to his generals who wanted 20K-30K troops to remain, Obama kept rejecting their troop requests until it got so low, even Maliki knew Obama wasn’t serious. Clearly, Obama made a calculated political decision they helped get him a talking point in 2012 and re-election, but it wasn’t a humanitarian decision, that’s for damn sure.
tedf says
First of all, I know you know that under the 2008 SOFA, which President Bush signed, the United States was required to withdraw all forces from Iraq by the end of 2011. What you call President Obama’s failure to negotiate a different arrangement is really the Iraqi government telling us it wasn’t willing to have US troops in Iraq unless they would be subject to Iraqi law.
Second of all, what we’re seeing now is just another of the many bad consequences of the disastrous decision to go to war with Iraq, followed by the disastrous decision to disband the Iraqi state and army, followed by the disastrous failure to be prepared for an irregular insurgency after the “Mission Accomplished” speech. Did the fall of the Hussein government serve the US national interest? No way. It may have been good for the Iraqi people or it may have been bad, but I can’t fathom anyone who says, after the past decade, that it was a good thing for the US.
But the point I really want to make is that I think Pres. Obama’s mandate was to end the US war in Iraq in a way that allowed our soldiers to come home with their heads held high and that left the country as stable as it could be. That’s what he did. Iraq is not a permanent US project, and we are not perpetually responsible for what happens there, particularly because it was the Iraqi government who made it pretty clear, in 2011, that they didn’t really want us to stay. The folks who want us in another war now are, more or less, the same folks who got us into the mess in the first place. We should of course act to protect our national interest, but we should be looking for every peaceful means, and we frankly cannot be too picky about which of the various unsavory elements that we helped unleash runs which part of Iraq.
danfromwaltham says
From what I read, it was Obama insisting that any new SOFA be ratified by the Iraqi Parliament. Maliki wanted an executive agreement and just bypass the Iraqi version of our Congress. But Obama said no, thus setting up any new SOFA for failure.
“But recent reporting by The New York Times’ Michael Gordon paints a more complicated picture of U.S. incompetence and disengagement. Most notably, the Obama administration’s insistence that any Status of Forces Agreement be ratified by Iraq’s parliament set the stage for the inevitable failure of any agreement.
Simply put, while a number of Iraqi political leaders may have privately wished for continued American involvement to serve as a buffer and broker between both domestic rivals and neighboring regimes, far fewer were willing to support this position in a public, contentious debate. No one wants to be regarded as an American stooge in the prideful arena of Iraqi politics. Backing parliamentarians into a corner by demanding public ratification doomed a new SOFA to failure.”
Read more: http://www.longwarjournal.org/threat-matrix/archives/2012/11/iraqi_politicians_backed_into.php##ixzz34u7j0Lv6
tedf says
I call this idea “John Yoo squared.”
More to the point, I think you missed this part of the article you cite:
“But ultimately, the Iraqis did insist that a new SOFA had to go through their parliament and they would not budge on the immunities issue, which made an extension of U.S. forces there impossible, Jeffrey said.”
danfromwaltham says
“The spin that “ultimately, the Iraqis did insist that a new SOFA had to go through their parliament” is diluted by his preceding statements and by reporting from Michael Gordon of The New York Times verifying that it was the Obama administration pushing legislative approval. Thus, to the extent the Iraqis took up that position, it seems to have been after US officials made it a necessity”.
tedf says
… is that the issue you raised isn’t as clear as you suggested. Well, that was my main point, anyway. My other point is that it’s a special kind of wonderful that the American GOP should insist not only on our own executive’s unfettered power in the realm of foreign affairs and making war, but on the unfettered power of foreign heads of government, too! Hence, John Yoo squared.
mike_cote says
and John McCain and Lindsey Graham repeated that delusion every chance they got. No one should listen to those idiots, ever! This is just more case of Obama derangement syndrome.
danfromwaltham says
You did see all the waving and cheers and the statue of Saddam Hussein fall in Baghdad and the Iraqi people cheering. So you are wrong on that score.
Second, I believe McCain wanted more troops initially, which may have prevented the chaos that followed. But the diary is about 2007-present. So any talk about 2003 or banners on a ship or WMD’s, distracts from this diary and Obama’s culpability in the spiral Iraq is in.
Oh, by the way, Hillary voted FOR the Iraq Resolution.
HR's Kevin says
US was greeted as liberators in the Southern Shia and Northern Kurdish regions, not so much the Sunni/Baathist parts, which are the parts being invaded by ISIS.
The diary is not really about anything other than your typical troll attack against Obama. Once you open the topic, you cannot reasonably expect to restrict the debate to any particular time period.
BTW, voting for a proposal that was *HEAVILY* pushed by the other party does not mean you own the problem. While I do wish no Democrat had signed on to this, there is no way that HRCs vote on this issue is going to be a significant campaign issue except for people who would never vote for her in the first place.
danfromwaltham says
Don’t we all have performance reviews at our jobs? Does he just get a free pass?
If Hillary can be pushed around by Senate Republicans on a war vote, then I don’t want her answering a 3:00 AM phone call in the WH, nor should you.
I thank you for reading my comment though and the info on who and who did not welcome our military at the beginning of the Iraq War.
HR's Kevin says
It is trolling when you selectively cut and paste in order to push people’s buttons here.
Does Obama get a free pass? Of course, not. But you would blame Obama no matter what he did, so your criticism has little weight, especially when you *always* oversimplify extremely complex issues.
The question remains: why do *you* get a free pass here?
On the issue of votes, you could make this argument about getting “pushed around” with *every* single member of Congress. No one except ideological zealots care about that kind of stuff. It simply won’t have any real effect on voters, so feel free to waste your trolling time on that tack.
danfromwaltham says
Of course I didn’t b/c Dave, Bob, or Charlie would have said something. Nor did I misquote President GWB.
Authenticity and credibility is important to me. When one slings the bull like Obama had on his h/c plan, Iraq, IRS scandal, Fast and Furious, the southern border security (why hasn’t anyone here wrote about this?), I don’t believe anything he says.
HR's Kevin says
Because you are not even remotely credible on most topics. You always grossly exaggerate your points, ignore well-known evidence that disproves your points, post links to articles that you have not read carefully, ignore comments that directly contradict what you say. It is crystal clear that you only care to pretend to be credible, not attempt to achieve the actual thing.
What I am saying is that you have made such a habit of attacking everything Obama does without regard to evidence that further attacks simply don’t have any bite.
Christopher says
…that the Saddam statue-toppling was staged. Yes, it happened, but it was portrayed as being a bigger event involving more people than was actually the case.
danfromwaltham says
George HW Bush involved in the JFK assassination?
mike_cote says
mike_cote says
It was accomplished before President Obama even became president.
danfromwaltham says
Can you admit that?
Christopher says
…which it sounds like you are blaming him for.
danfromwaltham says
Or South Korea or even Bosnia? Of course not and now our troops are returning to a more dangerous Iraq.
At some point, you can’t keep blaming the previous administration.
HR's Kevin says
Although we do still have bases in Japan and Germany, we have absolutely no role in enforcing peace or law and order in those countries.
Maintaining a presence in Iraq would be a *very* different thing.
In any case, if we were to stay in Iraq, you would be *guaranteed* to criticize Obama for it.
danfromwaltham says
That make sense?
Don’t you believe US forces act as a deterrent from N. Korean aggression?Or Soviet aggression during the Cold War? So we did keep the peace, peace thru strength. Same in Bosnia.
The role in Iraq in 2011 if we obtained a SOFA would be to train the Iraqi army and act as a deterrent from Iranian and AQ influence. More likely, drone and air support would be required but no convoys patrolling the streets of Baghdad. If one can see the finish line, why stop and quit? That’s what happened in 2011 when we withdrew all the forces and left a vacuum.
I wish Obama would eat some humble pie and just acknowledge his error. He would shed this aura of arrogance he displays.
Christopher says
…I’m pretty sure we are in those countries with their full invitation and consent at this point.
danfromwaltham says
That according to the NYT (see my prior diary). Absolute disgrace and now look at what’s happening in Iraq.
jconway says
Asked for HW Bush’s help and were rebuffed, we knew he was gassing his people since we could check our receipts. I consider myself a realist institutionalist. I like the UN, NATO, our alliances, and feel that the US can and should act when we are attacked, our allies are attacked, or there is a humanitarian crisis that only multilateral military action can respond to. Darfur, Rwanda, the breakup of the Yugoslavia, and the early stages of the Syrian and Libyan resistance springs to mind.
Here we have a grave humanitarian crisis, nobody is arguing ISIS is an army full of good people. But we would be using action on behalf of a corrupt dictatorship backed by our adversary Iran. The shifting alliances in this conflict are taking on an Orwellian proportion. We need to stop an army, formed to remove our enemy Assad and our grebe my Maliki, both puppets of our enemy Iran, but backed by other other enemies Al Qaeda? No thank you.
Obama is and will continue to mismanage this crisis since he has the ear of far too many discredited hawks like Kaplan, Kagan, Samantha Power and Susan Rice. Hagel and Kerry seemed to have reforgotten the lessons of Vietnam they forgot when they voted for the war in the first place. But this is exactly the Middle East wide sectarian war predicted by the experts before a single shot was fired in anger against Saddam by US forces. His expansionism and militarism was contained and he was a critical buffer between the Saudi’s and Iran and it’s gone now. This problem can be clearly laid at dubya’s feet.
Let the Iranians protect their puppet-who rejected prior offers of American help-and keep our brave men and women out of another needless war in Iraq.
SomervilleTom says
Yes, the toppling was staged. The story was first broken in this 2004 piece by David Zucchino. Mr. Zucchino’s report was confirmed and the incident was widely reported.
Our resident troll is once again reporting from right-wing talking-point la-la-land.
danfromwaltham says
Wow, US forces encouraged Iraqi citizens to enter the square and they did, by the thousands. They were not paid or following orders or a script.
I heard people actually testify under oath to Congress that our government (Bush) bombed the levies in New Orleans which caused the flooding, in an attempt to displace black people.
mike_cote says
Despite the fact that the flag was raised twice, the Marines and Navy Corpsman were still under fire and at risk during both flag raisings. How dare you insult the memory of their effort for your cheap Fox News’ style ranting and raving.
danfromwaltham says
There was gun fire and our soldiers took a defensive posture, looking for where it was coming from.
You are the one who is insulting our soldiers
mike_cote says
from February of 1945!
danfromwaltham says
I think your beef is with Tom and Christopher
mike_cote says
The toppling of the statue was supposed to be the natural outpouring of emotions during the war, yet there were US troops there coordinating the entire thing and was used as propaganda by Bush and his idiot friends. Whereas, the first flag raising at Mt. Sarubachi was a natural outpouring of emotions by the Marines during one of the most heated and deadly battles of the Pacific. They are not the same thing, they are not even close. Your connecting the toppling of the statue with the NOLA nonsenses is closer to the point.
danfromwaltham says
And pull the statue down all by themselves?
This is ridiculous.
mike_cote says
Just because they used an M88 means it was the only way that could have been achieved. It was still and remains propaganda.
mike_cote says
SomervilleTom says
If you think that’s what happened at Iwo Jima, then you’re even less informed (or more irrational) than I have previously thought.
danfromwaltham says
Keep in mind, many must have been scared prior to this historic event. Thus, when deemed safe, entered the square.
We really should not diminish what happened or how it got organized.
kbusch says
Given DFW’s history with sources there may be no difference between his having read and not having read the link.
So why bother presenting him evidence?
jconway says
I think it will be a strong campaign issue again , particularly since she owns this war as much as Bush does, and in spite of Obama’s best efforts, we are going to get dragged into another nation building exercise there soon enough. Was there any foreign policy issue where Clinton, by her own admission in her recent memoir and Robert Gates’ not favor a more hawkish response than Obama? Had she won her way in these meetings we would still be in Iraq, have put more troops in Afghanistan, had at least an air war in Syria and likely boots on the ground in Libya. And sadly, too many people who voted against her in 2008 on the war are giving her a pass on this and other hawkish stances going into 2016. And they shouldn’t-she should be held accountable just as much as every neocon who got the war wrong.
mike_cote says
By the way, Hillary was wrong as well.
Oh, by the way, Democrats do not blindly follow elected members of their party, like the brain dead republicans. Democrats are capable and demonstrate independent thought processes.
danfromwaltham says
You make me laugh. So Scott Brown votes 55% with his party and Jeanne Shaheen votes 99% with her party. Tell me Mike, of the two, who actually demonstrates an independent thought processes?
I rest my case.
mike_cote says
Shrub 43 was installed by the court by activist judges!
mike_cote says
Again, not every democrat is in lockstep with Senator Shaheen anymore than they are in lockstep with Hillary!
QED: So it is proven!
danfromwaltham says
George W. Bush 62,040,610 votes
John F. Kerry 59,028,444 votes
mike_cote says
Al Gore 50,988,442 votes
George Bush 50,449,494 votes
danfromwaltham says
George W Bush 271 electoral votes
Al Gore 266 electoral votes
U want to hear a story? I got home from work around 1:00 and my little girl heard me and came into the kitchen. We watched CBS and the election coverage. When Bush was declared the winner, I turned to her and said “Now we have a President we can be proud of”. Thanks for jogging my memory.
mike_cote says
Renquist, O’Connor, Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas
vs.
Stephens, Souter, Ginsburg, Breyer.
i.e Scrub 43 was installed by activist Judges who blocked the Floriday reccount.
kbusch says
DFW has reduced you to exchanging taunts with him.
A bit embarassing. No?
mike_cote says
n/t
mike_cote says
jconway says
Much like the war it discusses-this thread was started on false pretenses, abetted by misled liberals, and is a quagmire without end unless we withdraw now.
danfromwaltham says
I’m sure many here read for the first time President W’s quote in 2007 and how it came true. Most kept it on topic and why isn’t anyone else on BMG talking about what’s going on in Iraq?