Obama's Dismal Record in Iraq

Late last Saturday, 60 people were killed at a funeral in the shiite Moslem Sadr City district of Baghdad. A mourners' tent was hit by two explosions, one of them a suicide car bomb. A third explosion followed as police, ambulances and firefighters converged on the scene. Officials reported that women and children were among the dead and that more than 120 people were injured. Also on Saturday, eight people were killed in a separate bomb attack in a street in the nearby neighbourhood of Ur. And at least five police officers were killed in an assault on a police station in Baiji, north of Baghdad. The surge in mainly sectarian violence across Iraq in recent months reached its highest level since 2008. The violence seems to have been triggered by an April army raid on a sunni Moslem anti- government group camp north of Baghdad. In addition, Iraq has also seen a spill-over of violence from the conflict in Syria, which has also taken on increasingly sectarian overtones. In recent weeks, Iraqi security forces have arrested hundreds of alleged al-Qaida members in and around Baghdad as part of a campaign that the shiite-led government is calling "revenge for the martyrs." The sweep operations, mostly in sunni districts, have angered the sunni community and failed to halt the violence. More than 5,000 people have died so far this year in Iraq, 800 of them in August alone, according to the United Nations. ~~~~~ To step back, on 18 December 2011, the last US soldiers left Iraq, ending nearly nine years of war that killed 4,500 American troops and tens of thousands of Iraqis. Marking the end of the combat mission, President Barack Obama spoke to an American military audience in North Carolina, emphasizing repeatedly that he was fulfilling his 2008 campaign pledge of an Iraq pull-out, while praising the courage of American soldiers and vowing that Iraqi forces were prepared to assume responsibility for their country’s security. “Of course,” he noted, “violence will not end.... Extremists will continue to set off bombs, attack Iraqi civilians and try to spark sectarian strife.” In his speech, Obama boasted that “security incidents in Iraq have been near the lowest on record since the war began." Obama concluded his address by saying that “what America can do, and will do, is to provide support for the Iraqi people as both a friend and a partner.” What Iraq needed most during its transition to democracy was a limited, stabilizing American military force in the country. And Obama was an abject failure in his attempt to close a deal to keep a residual military force in Iraq. Did he seriously want to succeed? The fragile, newly elected Iraqi government refused to grant blanket immunity to American soldiers in Iraq, and Obama refused consider negotiating over the requirement. This was not the kind of detail to make a deal collapse. Since then, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has filled the power vacuum by consolidating his rule, eliminating his sunni rivals and tightening his control over Iraq’s security services. And, Iraq has descended into chaos. This year alone, approximately 1,000 Iraqis have died violently each month. Hardly a day goes by without multiple attacks being perpetrated throughout the country, as the domestic carnage proceeds unabatedly. And, as might be expected with the absence of an American military presence, Iraq has fallen into the orbit of Iran. Maliki refused to condemn the brutal al-Assad crackdown on dissent. As world leaders condemned the Syrian regime in 2011, Maliki was defiant, calling on Syrian protesters not to “sabotage” the country. Iraq’s support of al-Assad and Iran includes allowing Iran to fly weaponry into Syria through Iraqi airspace, which prompted US Secretary of State John Kerry to make an unannounced visit to Baghdad this past March to urge greater air scrutiny across Iraq. On September 1st, at least 52 Iranian dissidents of the opposition Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MEK) group were killed, mostly execution style, in Camp Ashraf, less than 100 km. from Baghdad; a massacre that followed the August 27 visit to Iraq by Qasem Soleimani, commander of Iran’s Quds Force. Supporters of the roughly 100 exiles who had been living at the camp blamed the attack on Iraqi security forces. The following week, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif also visited Iraq at the behest of Supreme Leader Khamenei, allegedly to express gratitude for both the Iraqi government’s support of al-Assad and the mass killing, which Iranian leaders widely praised. And yet, the presence of the MEK members was based on an agreement ratified by the UN, Iraq and the US in 2012. Accordingly, the UN vehemently condemned the September 1 attack and sent a fact-finding mission to investigate. The Obama administration has remained conspicuously silent. ~~~~~ Dear readers, after a decade of war, the US is left with minimal, if any, influence in Iraq. Meanwhile, Iranian leadership in Iraq and the entire Iran-Iraq-Syria arc has grown substantially. Obama's 2011 decision to make a total military withdrawal from Iraq has led to a complete loss of the the war for Baghdad, and therefore very possibly a loss of American influence in the entire Middle East. The next time you listen to President Obama vow that he is committed to being an active player in the search for peace in the Middle East, think about his deliberately dismal record in Iraq.