History won't be kind to Obama, or any other recent US Presidents, if this NY Times evaluation of the Iranian takeover of Iraq is any guide. No President (or anyone else) is named and associated with any decision.
Iran Dominates in Iraq After U.S. ‘Handed the Country Over’
By Tim Arango July 15, 2017
...
When the United States invaded Iraq 14 years ago to topple Saddam Hussein, it saw Iraq as a potential cornerstone of a democratic and Western-facing Middle East, and vast amounts of blood and treasure — about 4,500 American lives lost, more than $1 trillion spent — were poured into the cause.
From Day 1, Iran saw something else: a chance to make a client state of Iraq, a former enemy against which it fought a war in the 1980s so brutal, with chemical weapons and trench warfare, that historians look to World War I for analogies. If it succeeded, Iraq would never again pose a threat, and it could serve as a jumping-off point to spread Iranian influence around the region.
In that contest, Iran won, and the United States lost.
That's bad but is anybody to blame? Not really - instead we get weird passages like this:
Some are seeing an American troop commitment as a chance to revisit the 2011 withdrawal of United States forces that seemingly opened a door for Iran.
When American officials in Iraq began the slow wind-down of the military mission there, in 2009, some diplomats in Baghdad were cautiously celebrating one achievement: Iran seemed to be on its heels, its influence in the country waning.
“Over the last year, Iran has lost the strategic initiative in Iraq,” one diplomat wrote in a cable, later released by WikiLeaks.
But other cables sent warnings back to Washington that were frequently voiced by Iraqi officials they spoke to: that if the Americans left, then Iran would fill the vacuum.
Ryan C. Crocker, the American ambassador in Iraq from 2007 to 2009, said that if the United States left again after the Islamic State was defeated, “it would be effectively just giving the Iranians a free rein.”
But many Iraqis say the Iranians already have free rein. And while the Trump administration has indicated that it will pay closer attention to Iraq as a means to counter Iran, the question is whether it is too late.
“Iran is not going to sit silent and do nothing,” said Sami al-Askari, a senior Shiite politician who has good relationships with both the Iranians and Americans. “They have many means. Frankly, the Americans can’t do anything.”
One might have mentioned the prioritization of Obama 2012 and noted that the most qualified Presidential candidate in the history of forever was then Secretary of State, but why annoy the readership?
However, the most mysterious passage is this:
But after the United States’ abrupt withdrawal of troops in 2011, American constancy is still in question here — a broad failure of American foreign policy, with responsibility shared across three administrations.
But which three administrations? Bush 41 exhorted the Shiites to rise up against Saddam and then abandoned the southern Iraqis; he did establish the no-fly zone over the Kurds that led to the de facto Kurdish state we see today.
Clinton is probably the guy getting the pass here, although his approach to Saddam was certainly criticized from the right as weak,
Bush 43 invaded Iraq with no clear plan for managing the post-liberation occupation. On the other had, he Persevered and handed off to Obama a winnable (or at least, non-lost) war, or so said Obama and Biden as they pulled the plug prematurely in 2011.
Well. There is plenty of blame to go around but the Times doesn't serve up any at all. Weird.
Nor do they blame Trump. Double weird.
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