IRAQ
If what happened in Iraq is any indication of American diplomacy in the region, then what has been already a decade-long war against Islamic extremists could continue indefinitely, and at a huge cost. The Obama Administration is beating the victory drums about Iraq. What Obama fails to admit is he ran into a classic case of: “You’re fired"! To which he yelled back, “You can’t! I quit"!
True, 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 re-election effort. But one of the latest lies from our President is over why this happened. It is not because he or the previous administration magically created a peaceful and democratic Iraq. There will be no one like Gen. Douglas MacArthur accepting a sealed surrender from the enemy.
Instead, Obama left Iraq teetering on the brink of civil war. The nation is falling more and more under the influences of its nuclear neighbor, Iran. The truth is America didn’t win a thing. Under Obama’s leadership, we got kicked out of Iraq, and we left. In the end, we left as peaceably as the town drunk when he is thrown into the street by the saloon bouncer.
Iraqi officials nixed a chance for victory and real reforms in Iraq. Because Maliki, facing dissent from inside Iraq and from bordering Iran, decided he would not provide legal justification to U.S. troops after Dec. 31, 2011. In other words, U.S. troops could be arrested, prosecuted and even executed by Iraqi civilians for so much as providing protective assistance to their own forces or even Iraqi civilians.
Of course, the Obama political machine quickly announced another victory parade, adding the withdrawal from Iraq to its list of Mideast accomplishments, which include the killing of Osama bin Laden and helping in the overthrow of Libyan dictator Gadhafi.
The bottom line is Iraq is a bigger abyss today than it was when Saddam Hussein displayed his obsolete army on the parade grounds. The United States will be left with fewer than 200 Marines assigned to help protect the huge U.S. Embassy compound in Baghdad. It has yet to be decided whether a small number of other personnel will provide training related to the fancy new military hardware which could easily fall into the hands of a belligerent and extremist Iraq.
“The rest of our troops in Iraq will come home", Obama bragged at the White House on the final Friday of October 2011, adding that the troops will “be home for the holidays".
“After nearly nine years, America’s war in Iraq will be over", the President said.
The Washington Post has already warned that sectarian strife or other violence could break out in Iraq the moment U.S. forces have left.
So America’s war in Iraq ends, with a whimper and not a bang. Never mind that U.S. military intervention in Iraq cost the United States $1 trillion and more than 4,400 American lives and left a power vacuum at the epicenter of the world’s oil.
You won’t hear a word about that from Obama’s re-election campaign. Rather, the campaign will tell voters that Obama oversaw the conclusion of the Iraq conflict. Count on such slogans as: “He brought the boys home"! Then again, so did Richard Nixon if you count American troops being overrun by the North Vietnamese.
It is ironic that America’s inability to create stability in Iraq, the one must-win war, simply adds one more nation to a growing list of Arab countries that are imploding.
Only time will tell how the 'anointed' one plays this one up!
LIBYA
The neoconservatives began arguing last winter that America must intervene to save the “rebels". Obama struck out in Iraq, and Afghanistan is a quagmire. Obama must have been hoping that intervention in Libya would salvage his reputation.
Right after the murder of Gadhafi, Obama hailed the declaration of freedom in Libya, saying, “a new era of promise” is under way in the African nation. Not so fast, Mr. Obama!
Libya is controlled by rival tribes and competing interests, none of which have one iota of democratic tradition. The way that Gadhafi and more than 50 of his close associates were assassinated has led to speculation that Libya’s future is prefigured by the chaotic violence that befell Somalia after the overthrow of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991, which has persisted ever since.
Reuters pointed out the obvious in early November 2011: that after the killing of Gadhafi, Libya itself risks tribal violence, insurgency and chaos.
Gadhafi leaves behind a country with no proven governmental institutions or political parties, little or no independent civil service and civil society, no tradition of civil rights, free speech or free media, a one-track economy almost wholly dependent on oil export revenues and a system of national administration based on the fickle favour of the “Brother Leader" family ties, patronage and corruption.Does this sound a little like Iraq?
Its army broken, its borders defiled, its sovereignty outraged, Libya’s future direction is, as of this moment, more a matter of fond hope than settled policy. Democracy in Libya is an idea. It has as yet no roots and no substantive presence. Islamism, of various shades, and tribalism are, on the other hand, vibrant forces that may now feed on the power vacuum.
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There is a groundswell of instability in the Islamic world. Obama can make all the victory speeches he wants and try to placate the American people with more lies. But the Holy War that began just over a decade ago is still raging, and there is still no victory in sight.
