It's fine to have sympathy for President Obama in Iraq

Last edited Fri Jun 20, 2014, 06:39 PM - Edit history (3)

. . . but it's not a sentiment that I'd extend to judgment of his actions right now.

The reason that he's finding himself in the position of responding with military assistance has everything to do with the way he neglected to repudiate several of the Bushian justifications for remaining militarily engaged in Iraq.

One is his insistence that there's some sort of terror war to defend the U.S. against that threatens to spring out of Iraq and attack the U.S. or our “national security” interests. I'm straining to remember where, in the decade we've been meddling militarily in Iraq, did any Iraqis come to the U.S. and attempt to attack us?

It's a ludicrous excuse for insisting that he has a military prerogative in Iraq, and its ignorant of the fact that our military presence and activity in Iraq actually fuels and fosters terrorists. It's right there in Bush's 2006 National Intelligence Report.

The intelligence estimate, completed in April 2006, was the first formal appraisal of global terrorism by U.S. intelligence agencies since the Iraq war began, and it represents a consensus view of the 16 disparate spy services inside government. Titled "Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States," it asserts that Islamic radicalism, rather than being in retreat, has metastasized and spread across the globe.

An opening section of the report, "Indicators of the Spread of the Global Jihadist Movement," cites the Iraq war as a reason for the diffusion of jihad ideology.

If you just take Pres. Obama's recent decision to send 300 U.S. military advisers to assist Iraqis in directing attacks against Iraqi targets, you can see the folly rising, yet again, where our military interference is just going to be a recruiting tool for whatever forces are resisting that Potemkin of democracy in Baghdad. The predictable effect will be the U.S. ownership, in Iraqis eyes, of any objectionable assault we had a hand in which kills innocent Iraqis.

The other thing the President has done is put the introduction of the military forces assisting the Iraqi army into operation well before there's even a promise from the Iraqi government we're defending to effect the political reconciliation that Bush first demanded and then completely let go.

The President himself said that no military action would be forthcoming without that political rapprochement, but here we are, advantaging just one side of the political divide with our military advisers and weaponry he deployed pointed right at regions which not only harbor the armed insurgency but is home to Maliki's political opposition - all at the same time he's calling for political reconciliation in the vain hope that Sunnis won't align their own sympathies with the armed rebellion.

The 2002 AUMF hasn't been repealed, so President Obama, by declaring some right under that AUMF to stage air attacks into Iraq if he deems it appropriate is just a U.S. gun pointed at any resisting Iraqi's head; all the while pressing for political concessions standing beside the government that has refused to accommodate that opposition politically.

It's the same type of military imperialism which had Iraqis voting for their leadership with the U.S. guns pointed directly at the Shiite-dominated regime's political opposition.

Anyone who believes that the Iraqi army can precisely target just the bad guys and leave the Iraqi population safe, hasn't been watching the Maliki regime as it prosecutes it military force against rival population centers. This isn't something that our military has any business enabling, and I don't believe the president is being realistic about the dangerous blowback to Iraqis and others that is inevitable from our military interference.

What do we do if political rapprochement fails? If there is some agreement will U.S. forces be sent back to Iraq to 'watch over' the political process again?

Accepting Bush's 'terror' rationale for remaining militarily engaged in Iraq and adopting it is the president's responsibility and he should be held accountable for that, not sympathized with.

Accepting the notion that our military can aid ANY political goal inside Iraq without proving counterproductive and provocative is Pres. Obama's responsibility and he should be held accountable for that, not sympathized with.