He opposed the Iraq War from the start in 2003.
He opposed the 2007-08 "surge" that brought about
an incredible victory.
Bush ignored the advice of hostiles like Obama and instead won the war.
Bush handed Obama victory when he took over,
and all he had to do was keep it.
But Obama deliberately abandoned Iraq
and
deliberately threw away that victory
for no reason.
As predicted by his critics, the jihad (in the new and satanic form of ISIS)
took over large parts of Iraq
and began a genocide.
The ISIS genocide of Christians, Yazidi and Shia
is a direct consequence of the American voters electing this appeasing fool of a President in 2008 and again in 2012.
He promised to throw Iraq to the wolves, and the American voters liked that and elected him, and he did throw Iraq to the wolves.
The genocidal reign
of the Islamic State is
Obama's legacy.
And he did it all for no reason.
Australian Prime Minister
John Howard,
Feb 2007,
on Obama's plan to quit Iraq by Mar 2008:
"I think that will just encourage those who want to completely destabilize and destroy Iraq,
and create chaos and a victory for the terrorists to hang on and hope for an Obama victory.
If I were running al Qaeda in Iraq, I would put a circle around March 2008
and be praying as many times as possible for a victory, not only for Obama
but also for the Democrats."
Obama responds
by ridiculing Australia - one of America's only allies in the world.
Like John Kerry, he only has contempt for countries that are fool enough
to support America and fight with it.
Comment:
"You gotta love the Democrats. 'We should have more friends! We need allies!'
'Except the ones we have now -- they can fuck off!'"
Obama, Sept 2007, wants to surrender to the jihad in Iraq immediately.
"There is no military solution in Iraq, and there never was. The best way to protect our security and to pressure Iraq's leaders to resolve their civil war is to immediately begin to remove our combat troops. Not in six months or one year -- now."
National Review editors, 27 Oct 2008,
fear that
President Obama will begin the surrender in Iraq:
"He plans to begin drawing down our forces at a rate as brisk as two brigades a month
...
Notwithstanding the success of the surge, Obama's plan has not changed
...
The retreat presumably begins on Day One.
...
As America retreats, remnant al-Qaeda in Iraq elements will have the opportunity to surge, as will those forces backed by the ayatollahs in Iran and others supported by Sunni Arab neighbors. The strategic advantages we have won in the heart of the Middle East - purchased at a terrible price - will be tossed away. The military that could not be defeated by al-Qaeda will be defeated by its own commander-in-chief's folly."
In 2014,
I recall
the first day I heard of Obama
in 2007.
He was slagging Australia off about the Iraq War.
(See above.)
I never believed in him.
I always thought from the start that he would be a terrible President.
Full round-up of Obama's shallow, changeable, poorly thought out,
and endlessly shifting
positions on Iraq.
Why did Americans want this weak, naive, inexperienced young man in charge of the war?
Obama speech, February 24th, 2009:
"We are now carefully reviewing our policies in both wars, and I will soon announce a way forward in Iraq that leaves Iraq to its people and responsibly ends this war."
Not "wins" this war.
Just "ends" it.
He does the best he can with the material.
No apology for opposing the surge.
No praise for McCain and Bush for supporting it.
No mention of the surge at all.
He summed up the past with no apologies:
"This afternoon, I spoke to former President George W. Bush. It's well-known that he and I disagreed about the war from its outset. Yet no one can doubt President Bush's support for our troops or his love of country and commitment to our security.
As I've said, there were patriots who supported this war and patriots who opposed it."
Senator John Cornyn:
"It's puzzling to listen to this White House try to take credit for the results of the strategy he and Vice President Biden adamantly opposed from the start."
Victory has many fathers. Defeat is an orphan.
Even Newsweek
(issue dated 8 Mar 2010) now thinks Iraq has been won.
Obama's hypocrisy in video form.
Bush launches surge in 2007. Obama and Biden attack him.
Surge succeeds. Obama takes credit in 2009.
Obama pissed away victory in Iraq.
But if you tell that to leftists now,
like Charles Johnson here in June 2015, they deny there ever was a victory.
But that's not what their man Obama was saying in 2010.
Throwing away victory:
Obama refused to treat Iraq like Korea or Germany.
He declined to leave any American troops or American bases in Iraq.
And so he is throwing away the victory that Bush left to him.
Mar 2013 update:
"American military forces are long gone, and Iraqi officials say Washington's political influence in Baghdad is now virtually nonexistent.
...
Overall, Iraqi officials and analysts say, Washington has pursued a policy of near-total disengagement, with policy decisions largely relegated to the embassy in Baghdad. Some tribal leaders complain that the Americans have not contacted them since U.S. troops left in late 2011.
...
"The Americans have no role. Nobody listens to them. They lost their power in this country," said Deputy Prime Minister Saleh Mutlaq, a Sunni, commenting on the disappearance of the Americans as a broker for most of Iraq's disputes.
The vacuum has been filled in large part by Iran and by Iraq's Sunni neighbors".
The Man Who Broke the Middle East by Elliott Abrams, June 22, 2014. On Obama's failed policy on Islam.
"The Middle East that Obama inherited in 2009 was largely at peace, for the surge in Iraq had beaten down the al Qaeda-linked groups. U.S. relations with traditional allies in the Gulf, Jordan, Israel and Egypt were very good. Iran was contained,
its Revolutionary Guard forces at home."
Under
Obama, predictably, this all got far worse.
This was predictable from the moment Obama emerged in 2007.
President Obama Wasted American Victory and Lost Iraq: What Now?, David French, June 13, 2014.
"Should we have pulled out of Korea and left what was to become one of Asia's most vibrant democracies ...
to be swallowed into the abyss of North Korean totalitarianism? If President Obama had followed President Eisenhower, that's exactly what he would have done - and proclaimed success even as South Korean cities burned."
Obama's Iraq disaster, Marc Thiessen, 16 June 2014.
"In 2011, the situation in Iraq was so good that the Obama administration was actually trying to take credit for it
...
Now in 2014, as Iraq descends into chaos, Democrats are trying to blame the fiasco on - you guessed it - George W. Bush.
...
Sorry, but this is a mess of President Obama's making.
...
When Obama took office, the terrorists had been driven from their safe havens; now they are on threatening to take control of a nation.
...
And now ISIS is taking back cities that were liberated with American blood. It has taken control of Mosul, Tikrit and Tal Afar and is nearing the outskirts of Baghdad.
...
If Obama had listened to the advice of his commanders on the ground, ISIS would probably not be marching on Baghdad today, and Iran would not be stepping in to fill the void left by the U.S. withdrawal. Thanks to Obama, we may soon have a situation where we are helping our Shia extremist enemies (Iran) fight our Sunni extremist enemies (ISIS) for control of Iraq.
That's quite an "achievement.""
"Iraq has fallen apart on President Obama's watch, as a consequence of his own policy of willful neglect.
I would say that this was a self-fulfilling prophecy, but that doesn't quite seem to cover it. Instead, I would characterize this as a wish-fulfilling prophecy. If Iraq is falling to al-Qaeda, it's because this administration deliberately chose to throw away the victory handed to them by George W. Bush. The left thought we should have lost the war in Iraq, they wanted us to lose it - and finally they're getting the outcome they wanted.
...
In purely humanitarian terms, this is a catastrophe. The administration is callously condemning tens of millions of people in the Middle East to poverty, terror, murder, torture, and starvation. And all for what? To flip a big middle finger to George W. Bush?
...
We're losing in Iraq because the people who are now in charge of our policy always said that we would lose, always thought that we should lose, always tried to make us lose, and now they get to make it happen."
The Irish Times,
25 Aug 2014, is still praising their hero Obama as wise,
even though the triumph of ISIS shows the total failure of his entire Middle East policy.
"President Barack Obama has been properly cautious about expanding the US military role in a region from which it withdrew in 2011, initially refusing to offer support to Iraqi forces until the polarising, sectarian prime minister Nouri al-Maliki stepped down. ... Unlike some of his critics, Mr Obama appears to understand that ISIS cannot be defeated by military means alone".
Well, ISIS understands that Obama can't defeat them, anyway.
John Nolte, 13 Aug 2014:
"EXCLUSIVE: Had the writing on the black ISIS flag translated. It says, "Thank you American Media for not vetting the community organizer.""
President Bush Predicted In 2007 With Frightening Accuracy What Is Happening Today In Iraq, 5 Sept 2014.
"They say hindsight is 20/20. In a time when many Americans wanted nothing more than to put the Iraqi war behind them and bring the troops home, former President George W. Bush's warnings fell largely on deaf ears. Yet, in retrospect, President Bush's words from a speech made in 2007 were chillingly prophetic.
...
Former President Bush endured excoriation from the media and ridicule from the pundits for his position on Iraq. He was mocked and scorned. But, he was right."
America abandoned Vietnam to the wolves
in 1973. It fell to the communist darkness in 1975.
Vietnam is still a communist dictatorship today.
Now Obama's America abandons Iraq to the jihadi wolves.
Helicopters on the Roof, Mark Steyn, June 11, 2014.
On Obama and Hillary Clinton's boasts of "ending" the war in Iraq:
"Obama and Clinton ended the war in Iraq by losing it.
...
And when the black flag of al Qaeda is raised in Baghdad it will be seen, correctly, as an American defeat. We have told the world something about ourselves, and the world will conduct its affairs accordingly."
Obama election ad in 2012
celebrates
throwing Iraq to the wolves,
and criticises Romney for wanting to keep US bases and influence there.
It should read:
"Kept their threat to lose the Iraq war".
Piers Morgan sneers, 11 June 2014:
"Al-Qaeda now running Iraq? Whatever happened to the promised 'freedom and democracy'?"
A turning point:
Obama orders airstrikes on ISIS to prevent genocide, Aug 2014.
Glad to hear it. But this sickening disaster is the consequence of Obama abandoning Iraq and Syria to the wolves.
"this war is lost and the surge is not accomplishing anything"
- Harry Reid,
leader of the Democrats in the Senate, April 19, 2007,
expressing how the Democratic party basically gave up on the war.
"We don't need more spin about how the surge is succeeding"
- Obama,
31 May 2008.
Question to Obama, July 2008:
"If you had to do it over again, knowing what you know now, would you support the surge?" Obama:
"No", followed by lots of waffling justification [click on the link to see].
"Let's look at just one example at a lifetime of principled stands that John McCain's brought about: his support for the troop surge in Iraq. The Democratic Party had given up on Iraq.
And I believe, ladies and gentlemen, when they gave up on Iraq, they had given up on America.
...
In the single biggest policy decision of this election, John McCain got it right, and Barack Obama got it wrong."
-
Rudy Giuliani, 3 Sept 2008,
on history's judgement on Obama and the Democratic party.
"Now, we know the surge has worked. Our men and women in uniform know it has worked.
And I promise you, above all others, Al Qaeda knows it has worked.
The only people who deny it are Barack Obama and his buddies at MoveOn.org.
Why won't they admit it? Because Barack Obama's campaign is built around us losing in Iraq.
...
Last summer, we came within two votes - two votes - of a congressionally mandated surrender. One Democrat, one Democrat broke with his party to support the surge. Ladies and gentlemen, thank God for Joe Lieberman.
It was John McCain's voice and credibility that stopped the Democratic Congress from losing this war.
Gen. Petraeus' plan will be a model for generations to come, and our troops will be heroes for the ages. Those who predicted failure, voted to cut off funding for our troops, and played politics with our national security will be
footnotes in history.
...
While Barack Obama expresses appreciation for our troops' service, he refuses to acknowledge their success. They have worked too hard, they have sacrificed too much for a patronizing pat on the back.
...
Not once - not once was Barack Obama's eloquent voice ever raised in support of victory in Iraq.
Not once was it used to rally our troops in battle. Instead, he inspired those who supported retreat and would have accepted our defeat.
We should all be grateful, ladies and gentlemen, that Barack Obama was unable to defeat the surge."
-
Lindsey Graham, 4 Sept 2008.
"Years of debate over Iraq and terrorism have left our unity on national security issues in tatters, and created a highly polarized and partisan backdrop for this effort."
-
President Obama's hypocritical speech on his Afghan surge, 1 Dec 2009.
Um yes, wasn't it you, and people like you,
that caused this lack of unity and partisan division?
It was people like you who attacked Bush for 8 long years over Iraq, Afghanistan and national security.
And even today, the Republicans will support your Afghan surge.
It's your own party that will oppose it.
"I am very optimistic about - about Iraq. I mean, this could be one of
the great achievements of
this administration. You're going to see 90,000 American troops come marching home by the end of the summer. You're going to see a stable government in Iraq that is actually moving toward a representative government."
Vice-President
Joe Biden, Feb 2010, tries to claim credit for Bush's success in Iraq.
Biden and Obama then threw away the hard-earned victory, and let ISIS emerge.