Iraq. Obama got his wish, and now we are paying the price for it.

The New York Times outlines how Obama abandoned Iraq


by Marc Thiessen

In Monday’s New York Times, Peter Baker recounts Vice President Joe Biden’s “excitement” at the chance to preside over the withdrawal of all US forces in Iraq: 

Ebullient, he praised the troops, congratulated the generals, wished Iraqi leaders good luck and called President Obama to share his excitement.

“All I’ve said about this job, I take it back,” Mr. Biden later recalled telling Mr. Obama. “Thank you for giving me the chance to end this goddamn war.”

Of course, he did not actually end the “goddamn war.” As the Obama administration is quickly learning, when it comes to ending wars the enemy gets a vote. Rather, what they did was abandon Iraq and create the conditions that allowed the current chaos to unfold.

Many of Obama’s defenders argue that all Obama was doing was carrying out the terms of the agreement signed by George W. Bush, which required the withdrawal of all US forces in 2011. But as Baker notes, “Both Washington and Baghdad had imagined that they would negotiate a new agreement for a small residual force after that.” So how did the negotiations over that residual force collapse? Baker provides some fascinating details:

Gen. Lloyd Austin, the commander on the ground, developed proposals for keeping as many as 24,000 troops in Iraq after 2011, only to run into instant resistance.

“The White House looks at the 20,000 number and was like, you’ve got to be kidding,” Mr. [Colin] Kahl [the Pentagon official in charge of Iraq] recalled. “This looks like a permanent Korea-style presence in Iraq, which nobody supported.”…

Pentagon officers and General Austin’s team refined the plans, developing options of 19,000 troops, 16,000 troops and 10,000 troops. The general preferred the highest number and deemed the lowest unwise. Mr. Biden aggressively pushed for a smaller force. Tom Donilon, the president’s national security adviser, asked Mr. Gates if he could live with 10,000. Mr. Gates said he could.

At a May 19 meeting, Mr. Obama decided to keep up to 10,000 troops and on June 2 talked with Mr. Maliki by secure video to open the discussions…. But the talks quickly foundered on the question of maintaining legal protections for American troops from Iraqi law…

Even as that debate raged, the White House was rethinking the 10,000-troop option. Mr. Obama was locked in tense deficit negotiations with Republicans and the cost of a residual force weighed on the discussions. Officials concluded that one part of the planned mission, keeping troops along the line dividing Arabs and Kurds in northern Iraq, was unnecessary. With that discarded, they reduced the plan to 5,000 troops.

James Jeffrey, then ambassador to Iraq, said it was clear that some around the president were not eager to stay.

“Certainly there were people close to him in the White House that were uncomfortable with his decision,” he said, “and every time we were running into trouble trying to get the Iraqis to go along, they wanted to pull the plug.”

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