rickyp wrote:fate
2. If letting the Middle East descend into anarchy and failed states is "good policy," then President Obama is the best ever.
Because there exist "magical solutions" that would persuade shiite and sunni and khurds to live in peace , and somehow Obama is not employing them? What ray tell are these magical solutions?
Let's say there is no "magical solution," especially since I proposed none. So, why not, just for once, trying not to be the hind end of a donkey?
Here's what would not bring peace to Sunni/Shia/Kurd: leaving without negotiating anything, while declaring stability. That's exactly what President Obama did.
Can you not see that the "red line" in Syria did not help things? Can you not see that failing to be involved at all, letting things just take their natural course, has led to where we are? Can't you see that ISIS is not just "Iraq," but also Syria?
Again, it's not calling for a "magical solution." It is observing that nature abhors a vacuum. President Obama created a vacuum and now is having to deal with the results.
fate
3. This was predicted when we left without pressing Maliki for a SOFA agreement. Say whatever you want, Obama's team wanted to get out more than they wanted to hammer Maliki hard enough to get a deal.
It was Bush who originally failed to get a SOFA.
Oy. Actually, Bush did get one. In one of his final acts in office, President Bush in December of 2008 had signed a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) with the Iraqi government that set the clock ticking on ending the war he’d launched in March of 2003. The SOFA provided a legal basis for the presence of U.S. forces in Iraq after the United Nations Security Council mandate for the occupation mission expired at the end of 2008. But it required that all U.S. forces be gone from Iraq by January 1, 2012, unless the Iraqi government was willing to negotiate a new agreement that would extend their mandate. And as Middle East historian Juan Cole has noted, “Bush had to sign what the [Iraqi] parliament gave him or face the prospect that U.S. troops would have to leave by 31 December, 2008, something that would have been interpreted as a defeat… Bush and his generals clearly expected, however, that over time Washington would be able to wriggle out of the treaty and would find a way to keep a division or so in Iraq past that deadline.”
But ending the U.S. troop presence in Iraq was an overwhelmingly popular demand among Iraqis, and Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki appears to have been unwilling to take the political risk of extending it. While he was inclined to see a small number of American soldiers stay behind to continue mentoring Iraqi forces, the likes of Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, on whose support Maliki’s ruling coalition depends, were having none of it. Even the Obama Administration’s plan to keep some 3,000 trainers behind failed because the Iraqis were unwilling to grant them the legal immunity from local prosecution that is common to SOF agreements in most countries where U.S. forces are based.
rickyp the magical dragon wrote:Obama tried to reopen the talks on the SOFA and was rebuffed.
What magical words would have changed Maliki's mind?
Again, I would invite you to join the real world: the US had no leverage on Maliki? None?
If that is the case, then Obama should NOT have used such flowery language in declaring victory. He could have simply noted that in keeping with his promise and in light of the stubbornness of the Maliki government, the time had come to bring our troops home. But, that would have cost him some victory laps.
Please convey your wisdom as learnt on conservative blogs.
Any wisdom is better than what you're posting here.
The current conservative view comes down to magical thinking and a denial of facts in evidence and historical record
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The current liberal view comes down to a pathetic excusing of the President's dithering. On the leadership scale, President Obama makes Jimmy Carter look like Abraham Lincoln.
17 Jun 2014, 7:28 am 
