Iraq is now lost, and it’s Obama’s fault

Iraq is now lost, and it’s Obama’s fault

The Charlotte Observer ^ | 11/5/2011 | Charles Krauthammer

Posted on Saturday, November 05, 2011 10:29:03 PM by boatbums

Barack Obama was a principled opponent of the Iraq War from its beginning. But when he became president in January 2009, he was handed a war that was won. The surge had succeeded. Al-Qaida in Iraq had been routed, driven to humiliating defeat by an Anbar Awakening of Sunnis fighting side-by-side with the infidel Americans. Even more remarkably, the Shiite militias had been taken down, with American backing, by the forces of Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. They crushed the Sadr militias from Basra to Sadr City.

Al-Qaida decimated. A Shiite prime minister taking a decisively nationalist line. Iraqi Sunnis ready to integrate into a new national government. U.S. casualties at their lowest ebb in the entire war. Elections approaching. Obama was left with but a single task: Negotiate a new status-of-forces agreement (SOFA) to reinforce these gains and create a strategic partnership with the Arab world’s only democracy.

He blew it. Negotiations, such as they were, collapsed last month. There is no agreement, no partnership. As of Dec. 31, the American military presence in Iraq will end.

Read more: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2011/11/05/2748329/iraq-is-now-lost-and-its-obamas.html#ixzz1ct71BT8w

via Iraq is now lost, and it’s Obama’s fault.