Original Sin and Other Thoughts About Iraq

As ISIS, the terrorist group tossed from al Qaeda for being too extreme,  continues its move toward Baghdad some things have come up needing to be addressed.

• Original Sin? The media loves to place blame and Iraq is no different. Some of the media blames the problems with Iraq today on George W. Bush calling original invasion of Iraq in 2003 Bush's original sin. But four years ago, in Feb. 2010 VP Biden told Larry King:
  
  “I am very optimistic about — about Iraq. I mean, this could be one of the great achievements of this administration. You’re going to see 90,000 American troops come marching home by the end of the summer. You’re going to see a stable government in Iraq that is actually moving toward a representative government. I spent — I’ve been there 17 times now. I go about every two months — three months. I know every one of the major players in all of the segments of that society. It’s impressed me. I’ve been impressed how they have been deciding to use the political process rather than guns to settle their differences.”

Can't have it both ways folks, if it was an Obama success in 2010, it's an Obama failure in 2014. Yes going into Iraq in the first place was wrong.  But when Bush turned it over to Obama the war was almost won.  All we needed to do is maintain a residual force in the country to keep al Maliki in line (after we left he stopped cooperating with the Sunni majority) and to keep the local terrorists tamed.

We needed to keep a small force in Iraq to maintain the peace and Obama didn't really try to negotiate a deal with the Iraqis to keep a residual force on their land.

•  Working With Iran on Iraq. In the vampire movies a vampire could not enter your house unless you invite them in.  When John Kerry said that we might work with Iran to help Iraq, all I could think of is are we inviting "the vampires" into our house.

• No Boots on the Ground.  There are so many reasons to avoid sending any of our heroes into harm's way. IMHO the overriding reason is Obama doesn't fight to win.  He picked up and left Iraq without trying to complete the victory, reduced forces and timing of the Afghanistan surge way below the General's recommended and is now playing cut and run in Afghanistan also. Yesterday Obama sent a small team of special forces to Iraq mostly to help guard the Embassy. Anything more than that without an intention to win is a dereliction of Obama's duty as commander-in-chief.

The situation in Iraq is changing by the minute but I cannot see any situation where we should work with Iran or send American heroes to fight on Iraqi territory.