... that something else must have been the catalyst and cause for the rise in violence. Fortunately for the curious, it is not difficult to figure out what this was: all available evidence points to only one conclusion, that the policies and leadership of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki obliterated the security gains of the “surge” and the final years of the U.S. occupation through sheer sectarianism and oppression. This is undeniable, and especially so when considering that many of the very same Sunnis who had ...
... a war that lasted through most of the 1980s and precipitated the fall of the Berlin Wall and then the entire Soviet Union.
As far as who learns from history, for now, the U.S. has a president in office now who campaigned on the fact that invading Iraq in 2003 was a colossal mistake, who, keeping this in mind, intervened only lightly in Libya and went out of his way to avoid being entangled in Syria. Meanwhile, Russia is placing a significant (though not huge) presence on the ground in Syria and ...
... on the issue of a withdrawal itself, but as Obama’s early years in the White House unfolded and the security situation in Iraq improved without any major political agreements being forged by Iraq’s Shiite political leadership—led by Iraq’s Prime Minister, Nouri Kemal al-Maliki—with the Sunni or Kurdish minorities, agreements that would be key in creating any lasting stability in Iraq, I became convinced that there was little more that U.S. forces could accomplish in Iraq. Having helped establish a dramatic improvement ...
... Obama Administration Removed Iraq’s Largest Political Obstacle
Originally published Nov. 2nd, 2014
How Did It Come To This?
At some point during Obama’s second term of his presidency, he and his Administration realized that Nuri Kamal al-Maliki was part of the problem, not part of the solution. It did not help that when the administration realized this, violence in Iraq was increasing to levels not seen since the height of the near-civil-war experienced in 2006-2007 during Bush’s second term and only seriously reduced with the so-called “Surge” of Gen. David Petraeus and the “Sunni Awakening” ...