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Obama’s Iraq — 40 Comments

  1. Panetta on The Factor Tuesday.

    More to be learned about this epic fail.

    Prediction: The Battle for Baghdad begins this month.

  2. About Beinart and his being an Orthodox Jew — here he is indulging in a bit of nuance (aka palaver) about that:

    “I didn’t call myself an Orthodox Jew; I said I attend an Orthodox synagogue. But anyway, it’s a reasonable question. I feel a spiritual connection through Jewish observance—when I’m in shul, on Shabbat, even through kashrut. And I feel a spiritual connection to Jewish people—a certain delight at certain Jewish idiosyncracies, at a sense of global peoplehood.”

    Not exactly a man of conviction in anything, it seems.

  3. The Iraq and Afghanistan projects were over by 2009. All the casualties sustained and money spent after that point, was a waste, a Democrat boondoggle. I knew it. Others might have known it but didn’t say it, because that would be defeatism right?

    Yea, except when the American President orders people to “stand down, let them die”, that’s not defeatism, that’s just being Presidential and Authoritative.

  4. You were expecting consistency?

    This is a crowd that has reached the end of history — history’s memories, that is.

  5. Cornhead…

    Al Baghdadi appears to be prepping the battlespace.

    Bill Roggio posits that the “Battle of the Belts” doctrine is being re-applied.

    See Long War Journal for the details.

    Due to weather and climate, Baghdad’s campaign season starts in Early December.

    Prior to that time, I’d expect ISIS to make Baghdad a VBIED Hell. ISIS uses VBIEDs in quality and quantities never seen before.

    I can easily imagine the Shi’ite faction fleeing Baghdad.

    Even now the Shi’ites are turning over major military assets to ISIS — and on the cheap — and in perfect working order. The girls just cut and run.

  6. Re Packer on Beinart
    the ground littered with … the remnants of large ideas and unearned confidence [as demonstrable in] a study of three needless wars”, the First World War, Vietnam, and Iraq.

    Is it not the problem today that the political Parties have too much power, influence, and demand too much devotion? A reasonable conclusion is made hostage to political/ideological loyalties and a man makes an ass of himself trying not to step on the wrong turds.

  7. Flash back to Saigon, 1975

    The difference will be that although some, not enough but some, of the Vietnamese who had put their trust in us got out, came to the U.S., and have become loyal and productive citizens. I doubt that will happen in Iraq.

    The great similarity is that a costly war that could have ended satisfactorily, was squandered by subsequent Democrat malfeasance. Will we never learn?

    With regard to Beinart, and other Leftists, the appropriate nom de guerre might well be “Pretzel”. Thus do they twist and turn reality.

  8. George Bush was supposed to be a domestic policy president too, he got blindsided by history, but he rose to the occasion to do the best thing for America by his lights. I thought the surge–in the face of so much opposition–was a courageous decision. Then this president throws victory away because it’s not on his personal agenda.

  9. Perhaps Beinart and his editor felt no need to reconcile the latter statement with the earlier one, figuring that the faithful would read only the dogmatic part and then move on.

  10. That’s why setting the record straight and correcting the false narrative against OIF is a hobby horse for me.

    It’s patient zero, the cornerstone premise, the anchor point, for the corrupted social political dialogue that has caused so much compounding harm.

    The primary sources for OIF clearly show it was right on the law and justified on the policy, yet the false narrative against OIF is their One True Thing that validates every other piece of partisan propaganda. Take that piece away, flip the script, and the rest starts to unravel.

  11. In Beinart’s defense, he did think it was important to renew the SOFA agreement back in 2010:

    …it’s a good bet that powerful people in the U.S. military will whisper in Obama’s ear that U.S. troops withdrawals must be slowed down, and that the SOFA must be reupholstered. Ricks, who like Biddle has close ties to the officer corps, says the U.S. will need 30,000 to 50,000 troops in Iraq for a long time if it wants to avoid a civil war that drags in the entire region.

    My guess is that Ricks’ view will prevail. The military has invested epic quantities of money and blood in Iraq, and U.S. commanders don’t want it to be in vain. Plus, an Iraqi civil war that sucked in its neighbors–as civil wars often do–would be horrendous. Although the Democratic base wants out of Iraq, the lesson of Afghanistan is that the military’s view matters more. “When push comes to shove,” notes Biddle, the Obama administration will “vote for not losing a war.”

    The rest of the article, though, gets sort of wishy-washy.

  12. Beinart is a case-in-point of a phenomenon I described on one of my (poli sci) professor’s blogs in 08-09:

    What’s called neo-conservatism is just the progressive (interventionalist) liberalism of Wilson, FDR, and Truman, renamed. The bashing of neo-conservatism by self-described Western liberals, therefore, has led to the frustrating, self-defeating spectacle of influential people speaking liberal platitudes but quixotically opposing our definitively liberal strategy in the War on Terror. The effect of these liberals’ tragic hypocrisy has been the degradation of the Western liberalizing influence on the illiberal regions of the world.

    By the same token, an equally damaging effect of the attacks by self-described liberals on our liberal strategy has been the degradation within Western societies of the domestic understanding and support we need to adequately sustain the war/peace-building strategy endorsed by Presidents Bush and Obama. Therefore, a critical task of President Obama is to fix the deep damage done to his and Bush’s foreign policy goals by Senator/Candidate Obama and other Bush critics.

    After 9/11, Bush faithfully carried forward Clinton’s Iraq policy, correctly followed the GW ceasefire enforcement procedure, and rationally matched means to achieve liberal ends with Iraq. Yes, it cost more than we wanted – because the enemy’s ferocity and canniness caught us off-guard and he seized the initiative before we seized it back with the COIN “Surge”.

    That’s what happens in competition. Respect the enemy.

    People like Beinart claim the same liberal ends as Bush but decry the ugly competitive activist reality it takes to achieve them in the arena. Put them in charge, and policy becomes irrational.

    When I was an activist, I faced a mini version of the same phenomenon. When the left activists I competed against made the contest ugly, many on my side pulled accused me of making a mess they wanted no part of. Of course, they partook in the spoils after our side won.

    Folks like Beinart relish the fine-cooked steak while protesting the abattoir and the butcher.

  13. Neo quoting wiki quoting George Packer: “Beinart was a vocal supporter of the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq but by 2006 as he published his first book, he “had concluded that it had been a tragic mistake”, according to George Packer in The New Yorker.”

    A piece of armchair analysis about that aspect of Beinart, from my blog:

    What can be made of the phenomenon of smart, sophisticated, perhaps even subject-expert prognosticators and pundits who strongly supported the goals of the Iraq mission while acknowledging it would be a long difficult process, but then withdrew their support of the Iraq mission and abandoned its goals once it became in reality a long difficult process? I think their temperament may lag behind their unbounded imaginations. The theoretical constructions of professional thinkers may not be robust enough to endure the blunt psycho-social and economic drag of real life. Or, the world is moved by primitive forces that are incompatible with their finely evolved minds. The same prognosticators may also underestimate, over-simplify, or skip over potential obstacles while bridging various points of their overarching theories.

  14. The Left spanked the heretic and they recanted. Peggie Noonan did something similar.

    When the tough gets going, the Left bends knee to tyrants.

  15. Eric:

    Or maybe they think the definition of “long and involved” is about a month.

  16. B is of the type “Liberal Monster”.

    The one who cannot escape responsibility for losing what was won and creating suffering mayhem and chaos are exactly and precisely the liberals like B who savaged Bush and voted for a ne’er do well who never did a damn thing in his life and made him President.

    B. is a disgrace and eternal shame should be heaped on his very head. He has no one to blame but himself and his fellow liberals. They not only scr&%d over the USA, the **&^ed over half the world out of pride and spite.

  17. Neo,

    Beinart reminds of Ross Douthat. Educated and smart, but shallow of conviction. Rationalizers.

  18. Eric:

    Yes. I don’t quite understand how their minds work. Back and forth, back and forth, erratic. A bit like Andrew Sullivan, Peggy Noonan, sometimes on and sometimes off.

  19. Mike: “He has no one to blame but himself and his fellow liberals. They not only scr&%d over the USA, the **&^ed over half the world out of pride and spite.”

    On my blog, I said this in reaction to a David Brooks opinion piece in April, but it agrees with your take on Beinart:

    In Saving the System, New York Times columnist David Brooks laments the retreat of the aspirational, American-led pluralistic liberal world order. Brooks sees the current geopolitical situation much as I do: opportunistic power grabs across the board by rogue actors in competitive reaction to the weak leadership (Brooks doesn’t pinpoint the source, but I will: President Obama) of the shrinking American hegemon.

    What frustrates me about top-tier pundits like Brooks is they talk about America’s faltering will to lead the free world as though the state of the national character is something separate from themselves when, in fact, pundits like Brooks are instrumental in shaping the national character, no more critically than when the popular narrative of the American-led Iraq enforcement and peace-building mission was in the balance.

    The false narrative against the Iraq mission is patient zero for the problem described by Brooks. When pundits surrendered to the false narrative against the Iraq mission, the will of the American people to lead the free world followed suit and collapsed.
    . . .
    I started reading the comments to Brooks’s column, but I had to stop after two because of course the NY Times’ readers blame President Bush despite that Bush reacted to 9/11 and acted to resolve the Saddam problem properly, and moved to reinvigorate the Western coalition.

    The blame for the weakened West is not with Bush. Rather, the blame properly lies with the betrayers who subverted American foreign affairs under Bush for partisan gain by adopting our competitors’ propaganda with compounding harmful effects. Yet with their typical sociopathic gall, the betrayers responsible for sabotaging the national character instead blame the consequences of their malfeasance on President Bush, the same American leader who tried his best after 9/11 to rally the West for the contest. The Faustian reward for their treason was winning political control of America. The damaging consequences, described by Brooks, of having the betrayers in charge of America have been predictable.

  20. Eric,

    Essentially, but you’ll note the absence of the words “Marxist method.” Heh.
    I think she mentions the more long-term goal of renewing social norms/interactions, but the article also instructs on the correct tone to take in other settings to garner converts.

    As the reference to neo-neocon and David Horowitz explained, creating converts is not about gloating; quite the opposite.
    It is about creating doubt, then letting that lead the seeker where it may.

  21. “So, pray tell, how does one reconcile that statement…”

    Lefties can reconcile it thusly:
    The invasion itself was a monumental mistake. But once he’d been handed that shit sandwich, Obama could’ve made it worse or better. The left will always blame Bush for the wrong of handing off to Obama an imperfect world.

    Note also, this is a very self-serving position to take, as there’s no arguing the counterfactual idea that the ME would’ve been more stable had Saddam been left in power.

    Would it have been better? Who knows?

  22. Neo,

    You’re right, but a rough analogy can be made to Duncan as (potential) ebola patient zero in America, but not the originating ebola patient zero in Africa.

    The false narrative against OIF is patient zero in the 9/11 era though not the historical patient zero of the false narrative against the Vietnam War.

  23. Matt_SE:

    The problem is reconciling this statement “Obama inherited [from Bush] an Iraq where better security had created an opportunity for better government” (and which he screwed up) with this statement “the Iraq War was a disaster of historic proportions…[whose architects had] far greater failures [than Obama’s].”

    How could their failures be far greater than his, if they left him an Iraq with better security and an opportunity for better government, and he destroyed those opportunities?

  24. Matt_SE,

    I would suggest to Loftis what I’ve suggested here. In addition consulting with accomplished ex-Left activists like Horowitz and Steve Beren on the nuts and bolts, look into contemporary examples of non-Left activist successes, such as the Ivy League ROTC movement, particularly the campaign at Columbia University that won over the University Senate, which was explicitly designed in the Vietnam War aftermath in part to keep out ROTC.

  25. As far as the dissemblers like Noonan go, I would say that they lack moral courage or conviction.
    Their lives are easy, and they’ve become temperamentally soft.
    They go along as long as the going is easy. When things turn tough, they turn away.

    That sentiment is shot through our society. Everyone wants the baby, no one wants the labor pains.

  26. “How could their failures be far greater than his, if they left him an Iraq with better security and an opportunity for better government, and he destroyed those opportunities?”

    That is a contradiction only if you believe the truth of both statements (the second statement’s truth is admitted by Beinart). I think the left sees the Iraq invasion as inevitably doomed, the facts of Iraq in 2009 notwithstanding.

    Bush could’ve handed Obama utopia realized, but the perceived immorality of the project allows rationalization of the downfall. Good things do not come from the hand of Satan.

    So, on an intellectual level it is impossible to ignore how Obama screwed up. But the feeling is that Bush is evil, so his “failures” will always be worse.

  27. Matt_SE: “this is a very self-serving position to take, as there’s no arguing the counterfactual idea that the ME would’ve been more stable had Saddam been left in power.”

    I do what I can with stuff like this:

    From the Iraq Survey Group Duelfer Report:

    Prohibited goods and weapons were being shipped into Iraq with virtually no problem. The only notable items stopped in this flow were some aluminum tubes, which became the center of debate over the existence of a nuclear enrichment effort in Iraq. Major items had no trouble getting across the border, including 380 liquid-fuel rocket engines. Indeed, Iraq was designing missile systems with the assumption that sanctioned material would be readily available.
    … From Baghdad the long struggle to outlast the containment policy of the United States imposed through the UN sanctions seemed tantalizingly close. There was considerable commitment and involvement on the part of states like Russia and Syria, who had developed economic and political stakes in the success of the Regime. From Baghdad’s perspective, they had firm allies, and it appeared the United States was in retreat. The United Nations mechanism to implement the Oil For Food program was being corrupted and undermined. The collapse or removal of sanctions was foreseeable. This goal, always foremost in Saddam’s eyes, was within reach.
    … There is an extensive, yet fragmentary and circumstantial, body of evidence suggesting that Saddam pursued a strategy to maintain a capability to return to WMD after sanctions were lifted by preserving assets and expertise. In addition to preserved capability, we have clear evidence of his intent to resume WMD as soon as sanctions were lifted.
    … ISG uncovered information that the Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) maintained throughout 1991 to 2003 a set of undeclared covert laboratories to research and test various chemicals and poisons, primarily for intelligence operations. The network of laboratories could have provided an ideal, compartmented platform from which to continue CW agent R&D or small-scale production efforts …
    … The successful implementation of the Protocols, continued oil smuggling efforts, and the manipulation of UN OFF contracts emboldened Saddam to pursue his military reconstitution efforts starting in 1997 and peaking in 2001. These efforts covered conventional arms, dual-use goods acquisition, and some WMD-related programs.
    … From 1999 until he was deposed in April 2003, Saddam’s conventional weapons and WMD-related procurement programs steadily grew in scale, variety, and efficiency.

    And this, from Situation of human rights in Iraq, [United Nations] Commission on Human Rights resolution 2002/15:

    The Commission on Human Rights … Strongly condemns:
    (a) The systematic, widespread and extremely grave violations of human rights and of international humanitarian law by the Government of Iraq, resulting in an all-pervasive repression and oppression sustained by broad-based discrimination and widespread terror;

    And this, from the UN Special Rapporteur on Iraq, Andreas Mavrommatis in E/CN.4/2004/36, E/CN.4/2004/36/Add.1, 18-19MAR04:

    The new evidence, particularly that of eyewitnesses, added another dimension to the systematic crimes of the former regime, revealing unparalleled cruelty, even in respect of the people being taken away for execution, and at the same time stories unfolded that were far worse than originally reported to the Special Rapporteur in the past.

    I agree it’s impossible to resolve whether Iraq would have been worse or better off with Saddam. But we do know that the containment was failing, Saddam was in breach, including an undetected active program in the IIS (Saddam’s regime arm that worked with terrorists), and intent on rearming. We do know Saddam’s regime was a terroristic humanitarian disaster that was “far worse” than known before OIF.

    While the counterfactual is hard to argue, you can at least clarify the situation with Iraq at the decision point for OIF. A lot of folks have revised, mischaracterized, or whitewashed what Saddam was.

  28. Matt_SE: “the perceived immorality of the project allows rationalization of the downfall.”

    Agreed.

    Again, that hits the reason correcting the false narrative is a hobby horse of mine, and why I emphasize the primary sources – Congressional states, UNSC resolutions, presidential policy statements, UN findings, across 3 administrations – clearly show OIF was right on the law and justified on the policy.

    For Democrats who think as you describe, I emphasize that Bush’s Iraq enforcement isn’t the best source to understand OIF – in fact, Clinton’s is.

  29. Matt_SE:

    That’s why I wrote:

    The first [statement] is the dogma of the party faith, with no need to prove it or back it up. The second [statement] is the tentative struggle towards the truth of what’s occurring now, and the deity (Obama) that failed.

  30. When unions advocated that they wanted members to have an open vote, instead of secret ballot, I knew immediately they were trying to pressure people using those tricks. But the regular American citizen probably didn’t pick up on that nuance until it was too late.

  31. Perplexing in a way, the grownups all knew in 2008 that Obama was going to be a disaster, that he was a fool in spite of the massive accolades from the numbskullery, that he was going to try and lose the war in Iraq and that he was going to get a lot of people killed. How many times have so many been so right about something so obvious while so many others seemed completely oblivious? It certainly was not rocket science to see red flags on a resume good grief, he and his both had to surrender their law licenses.
    We live live in curious and stupid times.

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