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Iraq War ends on Bush’s schedule, not Obama’s

By: Dan Spencer (Diary)  |  December 15th, 2011 at 03:31 PM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

President Obama and the biased media wing of the Democrat Party are heralding the “official” end of the Iraq War.

They are neglecting to note that in order to get the Democrats’ nomination, presidential candidate Obama promised to remove all combat brigades from Iraq within 16 months:

Whatever nuance Barack Obama is now adding to his Iraq withdrawal strategy, the core plan on his Web site is as plain as day: Obama would “immediately begin to remove our troops from Iraq. He will remove one to two combat brigades each month, and have all of our combat brigades out of Iraq within 16 months.”

As we reported in July 2008, Obama’s 16 month withdrawal plan was not realistic. To save face, President Obama redesignated the 7 remaining combat brigades still in Iraq after his artificial 16 month deadline as “Advise and Assist Brigades,” and declared his scheduled end to the war in Iraq on August 31, 2011

All U.S. troops, except for 159 uniformed troops and officers as well as a marine guard in the US embassy in Baghdad, will be out of Iraq before December 31, 2011, as required by the Status of Forces Agreement President Bush made with Iraq.

The Democrats can trumpet the Obama Iraq withdrawal all they want, but it was accomplished right on schedule — a schedule established by President Bush, not Obama.

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COMMENTS

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  • http://slcliberty.blogivists.com randy streu

    Nice one, Dan.

    • Dan Spencer

      Thank you.

  • johnt

    And in any case what war? The one I’m thinking of is world wide and the religion of peace didn’t set a time limit. But there is a election in play ands fools to be misled, no surprise.
    Obama and the media who created him would choke on their bile before giving Bush the credit he deserves.

  • buddyp

    If, as you indicate, Obama cannot take credit for the withdrawal, wouldn’t that also mean he can’t be blamed for it?

    I think the full withdrawal is probably not in our best interest. Of course, I wouldn’t want our troops there without immunity. It’s also not clear to me if Obama wanted troops to remain but couldn’t succeed in negotiating it, or if he wanted full withdrawal in any case. If the former, I don’t know whether or not a better negotiator or stronger president in general could have achieved a residual presence with immunity, but it’s possible.

    But back to my question, I’m hearing some blame and criticize Obama for the withdrawal, but in this diary I’m hearing that he doesn’t deserve any credit for it. I don’t see how the two are reconcilable, so it seems to me that each of us can only have one of those two views (or neither), but not both.

    • aesthete

      by saying, for example, that Barack Obama (despite his stated preferences) still lazily waited for over two years to withdraw, for no apparent reasons related to philosophical consistency.

      Me? I don’t think it matters one way or another; our objectives in Iraq are muddy, and I don’t see that our interests were furthered by the nation-building that went on there, or the new balance of powers post-invasion.

      • buddyp

        I see what you mean as far as criticizing him for not executing per his supposed 16-month plan (which, in fairness to him, he always said would be flexible based on conditions on the ground and to try to avoid instability, although he and his supporters always tried to have it both ways — saying we would definitely withdraw at least roughly along those lines, but also insisting he wouldn’t jeopardize stability, without addressing a scenario in which withdrawing after even brief delay would still jeopardize stability).

        What I mean, though, is that one either thinks complete withdrawal was a good thing (and may criticize Obama for taking credit he doesn’t deserve) or a bad thing (and may criticize Obama for not finding a way to keep troops there under acceptable conditions). I’m hearing some of the latter (e.g., from McCain), which seems irreconcilable with the view that it’s a good thing.

  • http://online.logcabin.org/about/ suzieQ

    During one of the upcoming GOP debates. All of the GOP candidates (with the exception of Paul who is nuts) have criticized this withdrawal. All of them have said that we need to be there longer. So, my debate question is this: If you are elected president, will you work with the Iraqi government to put more troops there on a more permanent basis? The same would go for Afghanistan: If you are elected president, will you ensure that we have a large enough presence in Afghanistan to ensure their future stability?

    • civildebate

      because the Iraqi’s don’t want American troops there on a permanent basis. No US president is ever going to say anything to change their mind.

      • dcacklam

        Is likely as much due to Obama wanting an ‘out’ that won’t smack of quitting, as it is due to Iraqi nationalisim.

        The Iraqi government can ‘want us out’ now, but as soon as the situation starts to threaten their hold on power (either due to foreign threats or domestic turmoil) they’ll be begging for us to come back…

        As for objections to the war, the facts remain:

        1) Al Queda was NOT willing to fight us for Afghanistan. They packed up and left the Taliban to fend for themselves (to this day, we are fighitng the Taliban and affiliates (such as the Haqqani Network), not Queda, in AFG)….

        In order to take the fight to Queda, we had to pick a battlefield they’d show up and fight on (not, per se, one they were already on – but one they could not ignore). Iraq was exactly that place, and most of the damage we did to Queda’s operational capability over the past 10 years was due to them throwing their men & resources into the meatgrinder that was US-occupied Iraq (for them, anyhow)…

        2) The regional balance was hardly ‘upset’ by the invasion – Saddam wasn’t capable of resisting a damn thing as his army was crippled by sanctions (hence the markably lower initial resistance in 2003 vs 1991)…

        He wasn’t, in any way, a ‘deterrant’ or ‘check’ on Iran after 1991.

        What he was, was a poster-boy for anti-American regimes world-wide (a role that Ab-Jab and Hugo now fill) – his open and continuous defiance encouraged other thug-regimes to blow us off… After all, we wouldn’t do anything about Saddam, what did they have to fear…

        THUS, the Iraq war has been an over-all plus to our national security…

        - dcacklam
        OIF 07-08
        OEF 11-12

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