Politicizing Our Exit From Iraq

[Geee]

Investors Business Daily:

Iraq: President Obama claims his total troop withdrawal by year-end was always the plan. In fact, thousands of our military would be staying longer, training Iraqis, but for the administration's diplomatic incompetence.

After announcing Friday a total withdrawal of troops by the end of this year, Obama reminded Iraq that "as a candidate for president, I pledged to bring the war in Iraq to a responsible end for the sake of our national security and to strengthen American leadership around the world."

But this is no responsible end to the Iraq War. It's the beginning of the consequences of America relinquishing its responsibilities in a place that became, as both George W. Bush and current CIA director and former commander of U.S. forces in Iraq David Petraeus put it, "the central front" in the global war being waged by al-Qaida and other Islamist terrorist groups.

Even a liberal like Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin, D-Mich., was "prepared to support a continued presence of U.S. trainers in Iraq beyond the end of this year" — which, utilizing thousands of U.S. troops, was the White House's preferred plan.

But because the Obama/Hillary Clinton foreign policy team's "tough diplomacy" failed to get the Iraqi government to promise immunity for American troops from Iraqi courts, Plan B went into effect: Bring the boys home.

Look at what Ramzy Mardini and Marisa Cochrane Sullivan of the Institute for the Study of War found after a weeks-long summer visit that included 40 meetings with Iraqi elected leaders, journalists and activists.

"The Iraqi government is deeply unpopular, as more Iraqis view it as ineffective in governing," the two military analysts report. It has big problems "delivering basic services, reducing corruption and unemployment, and the increasing restrictions on individual rights and freedoms."