President Obama’s decision to pull all U.S. forces out of Iraq by Dec. 31 is an “absolute disaster” that puts the burgeoning Arab democracy at risk of an Iranian “strangling,” said an architect of the 2007 troop surge that turned around a losing war.
Retired Army Gen. John M. Keane was at the forefront of persuading President George W. Bush to scuttle a static counterinsurgency strategy and replace it with 30,000 reinforcements and a more activist, street-by-street counter-terrorism tactic.
Today, even with that strategy producing a huge drop in daily attacks, Gen. Keane bluntly told The Washington Times that the United States again is losing.
“I think it’s an absolute disaster,” said Gen. Keane, who advised Gen. David H. Petraeus when he was top Iraq commander. “We won the war in Iraq, and we’re now losing the peace.”
U.S. troops will be vacating Iraq at a time when neither Baghdad’s counter-terrorism skills nor its abilities to protect against invasion are at levels needed to fully protect the country, say analysts long involved in the nearly nine-year war.
“Forty-four hundred lives lost,” Gen. Keane said. “Tens of thousands of troops wounded. Over a couple hundred thousand Iraqis killed. We liberated 25 million people. There is only one Arab Muslim country that elects its own government, and that is Iraq.
“We should be staying there to strengthen that democracy, to let them get the kind of political gains they need to get and keep the Iranians away from strangling that country. That should be our objective, and we are walking away from that objective.”
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Sunday warned Iran not to miscalculate the U.S. decision to withdraw its troops.
“No one, most particularly Iran, should miscalculate about our continuing commitment to and with the Iraqis going forward,” she said in an interview with CNN from Uzbekistan.
“In addition to a very significant diplomatic presence in Iraq which will carry much of the responsibility for dealing with an independent, sovereign, democratic Iraq, we have bases in neighboring countries, we have our ally in Turkey. We have a lot of presence in that region,” she added.
Leading Republicans shared Gen. Keane’s criticism of the withdrawal.
Sen. John McCain of Arizona called the move “a serious mistake.”
“I’m very, very concerned about increased Iranian influence in Iraq,” Mr. McCain, the senior Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, told ABC’s “This Week.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham, South Carolina Republican, said Mr. Obama made a dangerous decision that ignored U.S. military recommendations to keep some troops in Iraq next year.
That’s about how many Grant lost in the first 30 minutes at Cold Harbor. . . . (And Lee’s losses were proportionately greater after 13 days of fighting.)
— This at a time when the total US population was less than a tenth of what it is now.
4400 over a 9-year period is — in a manner of speaking — nothing.
ONE life lost is too many, TBS, but people who pull out the “4400” figure to point to the massive cost of war really have no perspective.
Central as it is to the region (and not just between the eastern & western parts of it), how can we leave the Mesopotamian basin? All the increasing belligerence from Turkey has been SINCE Bush’s original announcement of an intended withdrawal. Furthermore, an Iranian absorption of (part or all of) Iraq will virtually complete Tehran’s encirclement — whether direct or by proxy — of Israel.
I’m with Keane.
I’m not so sure that would’ve been (politically) possible, given the late stage at which we entered the fray. We never succeeded in fostering a western-style nationalism to rival his Stalinist version because by the time the French were defeated at Dien Bien Phu, Ho Chih Minh had already been organizing for over 30 years.
There is no burgeoning democracy in Iraq–its burgeoning Islam and Sharia! The disaster began when the USA first went to Iraq and continued to get worse and worse and worse; the USA had no genuine self interest in getting rid of Saddam Hussein–he much like Colonel Gaddafi and Mubarek–suppressed the Muslim Brotherhood–which was a good thing–but now the suppression is gone and things will get far worse for the people of these nations–America, Europe and Israel. Also the corrupt government under the Marxist globalist G.W. Bush, Rove and Cheney and now under the Obama corruption–never had any genuine desire to actually wage the war properly and win the war quickly–they rushed into war without proper planning, they sent troops into battle poorly trained and poorly equipped, they refused to allow the military to do things properly to actually win. And now Barack Obama and his homo, Islamo, Marxist, feminists have made this far worse–this debacle is very much like Vietnam–Vietnam a war the USA had no genuine self interest in. The proper way to wage war is the way it was during the second world war–basically anything less is completely unacceptable! The more the USA meddles in the internal affairs of other nations the worse it gets for them and for the USA
That’s a pretty low figure, compared to Vietnam and Korea. We’re still putting up with an impudent North Korea, now nuclear-armed; and we let the Communists overrun not only South Vietnam but Cambodia and Laos to boot. Compared with those wars, I’d say we’ve done all right in Iraq. This would be a good time to cut our losses, before throwing good blood after bad.
In Iraq, we vanquished our supposed enemy, Sadaam Hussein. Compare this with the other two conflicts: In North Korea, this would have been the equivalent to completely conquering North Korea, killing its leader and establishing a democratic government there. In Vietnam, this would have been the equivalent of driving the Communists out of South Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and North Vietnam, and killing the North Vietnamese leaders. I hear some even today, even on Israpundit, saying that should have been our objective: We should have done in Korea and Vietnam what we’ve done these past years in Iraq. So why complain about Iraq?
In Iraq, our fantastic victory has rearranged the power situation in the Middle East, just as a similar victory in Korea or Vietnam would have done in Asia. In the present case, we are concerned about the Iranians moving into the power vacuum; in the Asian wars, we were concerned about China. Korea and Vietnam have traditionally been buffer states of China, and Iraq has traditionally been a buffer between Turkey and Iran. An American presence, or lack thereof, has had little or nothing to do with that fact of the millenia, namely, that the world political situation is dictated primarily by geography, not by General Petraeus and his ilk.
Needless to say, I take all of General Keane’s complaints with a LARGE grain of salt. The significance of our very correct withdrawal from Iraq is twofold:
(1) It has taken away and obstacle (US troops) between Israel and Iran, freeing up both sides to engage in belligerence, and
(2) It is part of a NATO colonial retreat from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean. Probably not uncoincidentally, the most important hydrocarbon reserves are being depleted in the Gulf and discovered in the Mediterranean. The war zone is shifting: It was in Iraq and Iran, and it’s moving towards Israel.
I wonder if General Keane has considered those two points.