Iraqi quagmire calls the US back

http://atimes.com/atimes/World/WOR-01-170614.html



Iraqi quagmire calls the US back
By Ehsan M Ahrari
Jun 17, '14

When George W Bush invaded Iraq in 2003, he purportedly had big plans to reshape the entire Middle East into a region that would kowtow to the strategic priorities of America and Israel. The highly touted "shock and awe" tactic of the superior US forces that initially crushed the rag-tag army of Saddam Hussein, later on met the Iraqi version of shock and awe - a quagmire created by Iraqi insurgents from which Washington almost did not escape with its dignity intact.

Thanks to the Sahwa movement of the Iraqi Sunnis and General David Petraeus' adroit implementation of the counterinsurgency doctrine in 2007, the United States was indeed spared from experiencing another Vietnam-like defeat, something that Saddam Hussein always wanted to inflict on the American military. In 2011, President Barack Obama presided over the redeployment of American troops from Iraq.

However, in the wake of the steadily victorious campaigns of the Islamic State of Iraq and Sham (ISIS), which is currently heading toward capturing Baghdad, calls are rising from the government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki for the United States to come to Iraq's rescue. To put it differently, another Iraqi quagmire is calling Obama.

~snip~

As Obama is pondering intervention in Iraq, it is fairly certain that the horrible experience of his predecessor is very much on his mind. He knows that the American people will not stand for another war in Iraq, no matter how melodramatic the phraseology he eventually coins to rationalize US military involvement there.