http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/war-iraq-article-1.1899923As the U.S. military beats back ISIS thugs and arms Kurdish fighters in northern Iraq, as the world sees wrenching images of Yazidi refugees carrying their children into Syria, Baghdad looks set to explode.
Iraq’s president has at long last nominated a new prime minister — but rather than pave a peaceful transition, current Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is massing troops in the Green Zone.
More than any time in the past five years, Iraq looks lost. Primary blame rests with the Iraqis, too many of whom have elevated sectarian allegiances over national unity.
But a close second in allowing the nation to drift into bloody dysfunction is the Obama administration, which refused to keep even a residual, stabilizing American troop presence — and now disingenuously disavows responsibility for this momentous decision.
On Saturday, President Obama attempted to decisively rebut the notion that he had facilitated, even championed, a total American troop withdrawal at the end of 2011: “What I just find interesting is the degree to which this issue keeps on coming up, as if this was my decision.”
Instead, the President insisted, it was the Iraqi government that, against his will, refused to agree to a continued American military presence there.
A displaced woman and child from the minority Yazidi sect rest as they flee to the Syrian border.
REUTERS
A displaced woman and child from the minority Yazidi sect rest as they flee to the Syrian border.
This refusal to cop to cold, hard facts insults the intelligence of the people he leads.
Recall: In October 2011, as America’s engagement in Iraq wound down, Obama boasted that, “After taking office, I announced a new strategy that would end our combat mission in Iraq and remove all of our troops by the end of 2011,” praising the fact that “Iraqis have taken full responsibility for their country’s security.”
This became a regular applause line on the reelection campaign trail in 2012.
The President’s cognitive dissonance on Syria is equally unbecoming. In an interview with The New York Times published this weekend, Obama asserted that it has “always been a fantasy” that arming moderate Syrian rebels before that country spiraled out of control, accelerating ISIS’ rise across the region, could have made a difference.
Contrast this whiplash-inducing revisionism with the clear-eyed realism given voice by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
ST. PAUL PIONEER PRESS OUT. SOFT OUT MINNEAPOLIS-AREA TV, MAGS OUT.
Jerry Holt/AP
Hillary Clinton at a book signing last month in St. Paul, Minn.
In an interview with The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, Clinton — who had argued in real time for arming moderate foes of Syrian President Bashar Assad, only to be overruled by the commander-in-chief — diagnosed the current chaos:
“The failure to help build up a credible fighting force of the people who were the originators of the protests against Assad — there were Islamists, there were secularists, there was everything in the middle — the failure to do that left a big vacuum, which the jihadists have now filled.”
She continued: “One of the reasons why I worry about what’s happening in the Middle East right now is because of the breakout capacity of jihadist groups that can affect Europe, can affect the United States. Jihadist groups are governing territory. They will never stay there, though. They are driven to expand. ”
You know your foreign policy is in trouble when your former secretary of state eviscerates it so nimbly.
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