Repubs like McCain want us to forget why we pulled out all troops from Iraq in 2011.

Bush was the President who signed an agreement with Iraq to pull out all troops by then. Obama would have had to violate the agreement the US had signed in order to leave some troops when we withdrew in 2011.

Obama did try to negotiate with the Iraqis to leave a small number of troops, but the negotiations failed, because Obama insisted on a clause in the agreement giving the troops immunity from the legal prosecution that some factions of the government there were advocating.

So when people like John McCain castigate Obama for pulling out all the troops, they conveniently overlook the fact that Obama had no choice, unless he was to unilaterally break the agreement the US had signed a few years before. That would make all future US agreements and treaties worthless. And Obama wasn't about to put any remaining troops at risk of prosecution by some faction of Iraqis.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/all-us-troops-to-leave-iraq/2011/10/21/gIQAUyJi3L_story.html

In a Friday morning video conference, Obama and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki agreed to a complete U.S. military departure that will fulfill a promise important to Obama’s reelection effort. The decision drew sharp criticism from his Republican rivals, as well as expressions of relieved support from those who believe it is time for the United States to conclude a war Obama once called “dumb.”

For months, U.S. and Iraqi officials had been negotiating the terms of an accord that would have kept several thousand U.S. troops in Iraq for special operations and training beyond the year-end deadline set by the George W. Bush administration.

But Obama and Maliki, who have never developed much personal chemistry, failed to reach agreement on the legal status of U.S. troops who would stay in Iraq beyond Dec. 31. As a result, only a contingent of fewer than 200 Marines assigned to help protect the large U.S. Embassy compound in Baghdad will remain, along with a small number of other personnel to provide training related to new military sales and other tasks.

SNIP

The negotiations foundered over the U.S. demand that American troops receive legal immunity for their actions, a request Maliki was ultimately unable to sell to the anti-U.S. elements of his governing coalition after a war that many Iraqis believe has permanently altered their country for the worse.