Frank Gaffney: Who Lost Iraq?

We remember when the Iraqi people went to vote the first time and were so proud to show everyone their purple fingers. Now candidates that ran in the last election are being faced with violence from the anti-democracy forces still in Iraq despite what Obama/Biden are saying that the War is over and We Won! We haven't won anything and looks like the Iraqi people who wanted democracy could end up the big losers. There was no reason to pull our troops out so rapidly and send them to Afghanistan except Obama didn't want the United States in Iraq. Who pushed him to get our troops out of Iraq which in part has set off a series of attacks? Why has he been against the Iraq War from Day One or standing up to Iran except with a few words?

Sadly, all other things being equal, that popular ambition seems unlikely to be realized. There is an unmistakable vacuum of power being created by President Obama's determination to withdraw U.S. "combat" forces no matter what, starting with the cities a few months ago and in short order from the rest of the country.

We never understood during the Bush 43 years why Cristopher Hill was involved in our foreign policy since he was an appeaser. Didn't make sense then and doesn't now why Pres GW Bush chose him to deal with the North Korean Leader. We needed a tough as nails type person who would negotiate not an appeaser who seemed to be afraid he might make the North Koren leader unhappy. You negotiate from strength not weakness which Hill never seemed to understand and now is the Obama Ambassador to Iraq.

The signal of American abandonment was made the more palpable by Team Obama's decision to dispatch Christopher Hill as its ambassador to Iraq. Hill is the diplomat best known for his determination during the Bush 43 years to appease, rather than thwart, the despot most closely enabling the realization of Iran's nuclear ambitions: North Korea's Kim Jong Il. The unreliability of the United States as an ally - a hallmark of the Obama presidency more generally - is reinforcing the sense that it is every man for himself in Iraq.

This last paragraph of the article posted below is truly frightening when you realize what is at stake with losing Iraq. Add to that Obama's appeasement of the Palestinians, verbal attacks on Israel, and tepid repines to a nuclear Iran and you have an area of the world ready to blow up while Obama twiddles his thumbs and bows to Muslims like the Saudi King. During the attempted overthrow of Iran by its people, Obama and Hillary were mostly silent. They seem to only find a voice when it is Freedom and Democracy at stake and then it is on the side of those against Freedom and Democracy.

There should be no doubt, however: The repercussions of the Obama administration losing Iraq will cost us dearly in the future as adherents to Shariah around the world are reinforced in their conviction of that our defeat and submission is preordained. Even if, at the moment, we cannot fully comprehend the implications of such a perception, we will know from here on out whose "great achievement" precipitated the resulting horror for America and the rest of what was once the Free World.

How Biden and Obama have the nerve to take credit for anything in Iraq is beyond us as they always opposed the United States being in Iraq. Not only a dark day for American when Obama was elected as more and more Americans are discovering but it was a dark day for Iraq as well as Israel.

Who lost Iraq?
Center for Security Policy Apr 05, 2010
By Frank Gaffney, Jr.

Back in February, Vice President Joseph Biden declared: "I am very optimistic about Iraq. I mean, this could be one of the great achievements of this administration." Even for a politician much given to strategic ineptitude compounded by foot-in-mouth disease, that was a doozy.

As has been pointed out innumerable times since, if Iraq turns out to be a truly "great achievement" in any ordinary sense of the word, Mr. Biden and Barack Obama - two of the most insistent opponents of George W. Bush's efforts to consolidate Iraq's liberation - are among the last people in Washington who should take such credit.

Worse yet, unfortunately for the Iraqi people and others who love freedom, it looks increasingly as though the Obama administration will have the loss of Iraq as one of its most signal accomplishments.

Three murderous suicide bombings in Baghdad over the weekend are but the latest indication of the renewed reality there: Those determined to use violence to destabilize the country, foment sectarian strife and shape Iraq's destiny can do so with impunity.

The fact that the Iranian embassy was one of the targets suggests Sunni extremist groups - perhaps including the once-defeated al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) - are responsible for this round of attacks. Elsewhere in the country though, Shiite death squads that may or may not have ties to the pro-Iranian factions currently running the country are ruthlessly liquidating prominent tribal leaders and others associated with the movement in Anbar Province known as The Awakening. The latter were instrumental to the success of the U.S. surge and to the opportunity thus created for an Iraqi future vastly superior to its despotic and chaotic past.

Among the objects of the growing violence are individuals who stood for office in the recent parliamentary elections. This amounts to post facto disenfranchisement of the Iraqi voters whose turnout of over 60 percent - in the face of threats by anti-democratic forces that voting would be deemed a capital offense - powerfully testified to their desire to exercise the right enjoyed by no others in the Mideast except Israelis: to have a real say in their government and future.

(snip)

Increasingly, that vacuum is being filled by Iran and its proxies on the one hand and, on the other, insurgent Sunni forces, both those aligned with al Qaeda and those that have, at least until recently, been suppressing the AQI. On what might be called the third hand, Iraqi Kurds are experiencing their own internal problems as well as an increasingly ill-concealed inclination to assert their independence from the rest of the country.

(snip)

The prospects of any "great achievement" in Iraq are being further diminished by the direction to the Pentagon to shift personnel and equipment from Iraq to Afghanistan. The President himself reinforced that commitment during his speech to U.S. troops at Bagram Air Base last week. The detailed planning and ponderous logistics associated with such a transfer increasingly foreclose options to change course. Our commanders will soon be hard pressed to preserve today's deployments of American forces in Iraq, let alone to have them take up once again the sorts of positions in the urban areas that they held to such therapeutic effect during the surge.

Excerpt: Read More at Center for Security Policy