Was Obama wrong to withdraw troops from Iraq?
Did President Obama usher in Iraqs current crisis when he withdrew all U.S. forces and shattered the stability achieved by former president George W. Bushs surge? Foreign policy hawks have vigorously promoted that narrative, but their account does not withstand scrutiny. For one thing, it is now abundantly clear the Iraqi government was not stable or self-reliant at the end of 2011. Further, U.S. boots on the ground would not have made it so. Before the troops came home, Americans watched for eight years as the United States failed to resolve Iraqs internal conflicts. Keeping soldiers there beyond 2011 would not have halted the political hemorrhaging.
The U.S. experience in Iraq sometimes heartbreaking, often humbling has echoed the hard-earned lessons of Washingtons prior adventures abroad. In a 2007 World Politics article on nation-building, I noted that the United States has done best where it has done less and has been more effective at refurbishing and strengthening an existing state [e.g., Germany and Japan] than at laying a new foundation [e.g., South Vietnam, Haiti]. The second Bush administration aspired to break that trend, attempting to establish an orderly European-style state on the Tigris and Euphrates. Instead, the administration repeated the failures of the past. Radical regime change triggered a traumatic renegotiation of Iraqi politics, one that may take decades to play out.
When Iraq is considered alongside prior cases, it becomes clear that the current crisis dates to the entry of U.S. forces in 2003, not their departure three years ago. The most the United States has accomplished through military interventions in the developing world is to replace or reinforce local leaders, typically in missions that lasted a year or less. By contrast, longer troop commitments and more ambitious schemes of political engineering have tended to end badly. This pattern flips the current controversy on its head. Rather than thinking that U.S. leaders pulled out of Iraq too soon, future generations will likely wonder why they took so long.
Obamas critics have cited Germany, Japan and South Korea as places where the U.S. military has been a stabilizing force. They contend that the lack of a similar residual troop presence (numbering between 20,000 and 30,000) caused the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) to grow and the Iraqi army to fold. Such claims merit investigation: Has that hypothetical scenario ever actually happened? In modern history has a country comparable to Iraq overcome internal political divisions thanks to the United States keeping boots on the ground? Of course, to answer these questions it is important to avoid cherry-picking the record for favorable cases. One should examine not only where the U.S. military has kept residual forces for decades, but also where it left completely after years, or months.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2014/06/26/was-obama-wrong-to-withdraw-troops-from-iraq/
CJCRANE
(18,184 posts)In fact there was no discernible post-conflict plan at all.
bemildred
(90,061 posts)abakan
(1,819 posts)pre-conflict planning either...Being liberators and all..
abakan
(1,819 posts)That was the only thing done right by the US, in Iraq. I do not denigrate any service in my statement. I am the fault lies with the neocons and bushies.
yurbud
(39,405 posts)then tried to remake them as a force subservient to American interests.
They know when they are fighting for us and when they are fighting for their own people, and to the extent that stories of troops fleeing rather than fighting, that's why.
JayhawkSD
(3,163 posts)..."Did President Obama usher in Iraqs current crisis when he withdrew all U.S. forces," this article is a fail, because OBAMA DID NOT WITHDRAW THOSE TROOPS. This is not pro Obama or anti Obama, this is simply historical fact.
The withdrawal of troops was an agreement reached between Nuri al-Maliki and George W. Bush in 2008, before Obama took office. That agreement dictated that all troops would be withdrawn at the end of 2011, and Obama was bound by that agreement. He was powerless to change it. The decision was not his.
In fact, he tried to renegotiate the agreement and get permission to keep our troops there longer, and he failed in that effort. Nuri al-Maliki would not agree to the terms that were necessary for that to happen, and so Obama allowed the Bush agreement to be carried out and the troops left.
There is no point in even reading the rest of the nonsense in this article, because it is based on a nonsensical question.