America’s Lost Gains in Iraq

http://watchingamerica.com/News/240617/americas-lost-gains-in-iraq/

Thirteen years after 9/11, global terror is on the advance—in Iraq as well as in Syria and North Africa. President Obama's policy of withdrawal has failed.

America’s Lost Gains in Iraq
Die Welt, Germany
By Clemens Wergin
Translated By Simon Wood
11 June 2014
Edited by Bora Mici

The world still remembers that "mission accomplished" moment in May 2003 when U.S. President George W. Bush, in full flight gear, arrived on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln and declared that the war in Iraq was over. Only afterward did the civil war in Mesopotamia really get going, claiming the lives of countless Iraqis and thousands of American soldiers.

At the time, that "mission accomplished" brought Bush in for a lot of ridicule and criticism from Barack Obama's Democrats—even years later, when Bush's executive decision to increase the number of troops and implement a new strategy in the fight against the insurgents had actually changed the situation. Now, Obama is experiencing his own mission accomplished moment. Ultimately, at Fort Bragg, on the occasion of the departure from Iraq in December 2011, he gave a speech in which he praised the "moment of success" and stated that America was leaving behind a "sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq."

The recent gains on the ground in Iraq by the Islamic terrorist group Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, however, make it clear that much of what the Americans achieved, at a very high cost, has now been lost again. Mossul and the provinces of Anbar and Niniveh are now in the hands of radical Islamists. In his desire to withdraw from Iraq as quickly as possible, and his inability to wrest an agreement from Iraqi Premier Nuri al-Maliki, the president has jeopardized what the Americans had achieved through nine years of stabilization and reconstruction efforts.

The Culpability of the Iraqis

It's not fair, however, to heap the entire blame on American shoulders for the renewed disintegration of Iraq. The sectarian-minded Prime Minister al-Maliki carries a certain amount of the blame for the triumphal procession of the Islamists. While the Americans initiated reconciliations between the Sunnis and Shiites, the Shiite al-Maliki has done everything to re-alienate the Sunnis rather than integrate them.