A Few Questions for Obama on Iraq
Mona Charen with some excellent questions.
By Mona Charen
A few questions for President Barack Obama.
At your press conference, you said, “It is in our national security interest not to see an all-out civil war in Iraq.” If that is the case, why did you withdraw all U.S. forces from Iraq in 2011? Were you motivated by something other than U.S. national interests?
Did no one advise you that the current disaster was possible when you proclaimed in December 2011: “We’re leaving behind a sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq with a representative government that was elected by its people. We’re building a new partnership between our nations. And we are ending a war, not with a final battle, but with a final march toward home. This is an extraordinary achievement, nearly nine years in the making.”
If it is in the U.S. national security interest to keep Iraq from disintegrating, why are you deploying at most 300 special forces – just 50 more than you sent to find and destroy Joseph Kony of the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda? Does Kony represent a comparable threat to the United States in your judgment? …
You said, “Above all, Iraqi leaders must rise above their political differences and come together around a political plan for Iraq’s future.” Does this “must” have the same force as your earlier call for Bashar Assad to step down? What about your statement that “the future of Ukraine must be decided by the people of Ukraine” just a couple of weeks before Russia annexed Crimea?
Do you think it is easier for factions within Iraq, wracked by tribal rivalries, ethnic divisions, religious differences, a history of tyranny, and amid a crisis featuring armies marching and beheadings by the hundreds to “rise above their political differences” when you cannot bring yourself to negotiate sincerely with Republicans about the national debt or spending?
You scolded President George W. Bush – by implication – during your remarks when you said that the present crisis should remind us of “the need to ask hard questions before we take action abroad, particularly military action.” Did you ask hard questions before making the decision to withdraw all forces from Iraq, or were you more interested bragging rights about “ending wars”? Do you see now that the enemy gets a vote?
