COMMENTARY | Fulfilling a campaign promise, President Barack Obama has announced the full and total withdraw of American troops from Iraq. Mission accomplished, he might have said. Our long, national nightmare is now over.
If Hot Air is correct, the next phase in the even longer nightmare that is Iraq is about to begin. The dirty little secret is that Americans are leaving Iraq not because the Obama administration wants them to or that anyone thinks it is prudent. They are leaving because the Shiite majority government in Iraq would like the Americans out of the way so that it can consolidate power, with the help of Iran, at the expense of Iraq's Sunni minority.
Saudi Arabia, which sees Iran as an existential, is not likely to sit still for an Iran's client state on its northern border. What it lacks in military power, it has more than enough cash. Money can provide a lot of arms and support for a Sunni uprising against an Iranian back regime.
Of course that has within it the prospect of more killing, horror, and devastation. Iraq would become a police state once again, with all that implies. The Bush era dream of an Arab democracy, fueled to prosperity with a properly developed oil industry, would become a distant memory.
Obama must be hoping against hope that the blow up does not occur or at the very least sometime after 2012. This may be a vain hope. Just as the aftermath in Libya has all the potential for disaster, Iraq too could very well be experiencing a long, hot summer next year just in time for the 2012 election to heat up.
It is true that American troops are leaving because the current Iraqi government does not want them there. But a stronger leader than Obama (say, George W. Bush) could have exerted more pressure and have insisted that enough Americans stay to consolidate the hard won gains of the past nine years and to win the peace.
Instead, Obama may well have snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. If Iraq goes up in flames on his watch, he may try to blame Bush as he has for so many things, but he will have no one to blame for the disaster but himself.
chris morris chris morris mike stoops mike stoops end of the world end of the world jerome harrison
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.