Considering the situation in Iraq today, one must look back to when Obama took office in January 2009 to see the Iraq he inherited versus the one that exists now. The contrast is startling.
A fair-minded reading of the facts, I think, shows that when Mr. Obama was sworn in, the Iraq war had more or less been won. Things were fragile to be sure. But the errors that were made during the occupation of Iraq following the fall of Saddam, which were extremely costly, were corrected in 2007. That was when President Bush made what is in my estimation his most impressive decision. In the face of enormous political opposition, with the nation weary of the war, Mr. Bush implemented a new counterinsurgency strategy, dubbed the “surge” and led by the estimable General David Petraeus. It resulted in startling gains.Look at it 6 years later and it is unrecognizable, and not in a good way. ISIS is undoing years of work, slaughtering Iraqis and Kurds with impunity, working hard to turn Iraq and Syria into some kind of Islamist hellhole that would have made Hitler's SS flinch in horror.
By the time the surge ended in 2008, violence in Iraq had dropped to the lowest level since the first year of the war. Sectarian killings had dropped by 95 percent. By 2009, U.S. combat deaths were extremely rare. (In December of that year there were no American combat deaths in Iraq.) Iraq was on the mend. Even Barack Obama, who opposed the surge every step of the way, conceded in September 2008 that it had succeeded in reducing violence “beyond our wildest dreams.”
Obama's neglect and all-but-abandonment of Iraq and all of the gains made post-Saddam will be one of his most damning legacies. His lukewarm response to the genocide taking place in Kurdish territories has to make one wonder if this is what he wanted all along, proving to the world that America no longer stands up for the downtrodden and terrorized allies. His excuse that he's authorizing air strikes to protect American while stating outright that he will not order boots on the ground to drive out ISIS lives rings hollow. As all powerful as ISIS is portrayed, a couple of Marine or Airborne divisions would end that perceived invulnerability in short order. What's he's really doing is going through the motions. Ask any of our troops whether they would go back to deal with these murderous assholes and I'll bet almost every single one of them would ask when they could ship out, even the ones who served numerous tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.
What a pathetic figure The Won has become, turning a blind eye to genocide and religious mass murder that would not have happened if he hadn't abandoned the Iraqis and Kurds. What little respect I may have had left for the man is gone. It's no wonder no one on this world has any respect for the man or America. I don't blame them.