This should be really interesting:
The Story:
The Obama administration has decided to withdraw all U.S. forces from Iraq by the end of the year after failing to reach an agreement with the Iraqi government that would have left several thousand troops there for special operations and training.
President Obama and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki spoke Friday morning to cement that agreement in a scheduled telephone call.
The two leaders also agreed to continue informally discussing the need for and the terms of a U.S. military presence in Iraq into next year, people familiar with the agreement said. As a result, the only U.S. military presence that will remain in Iraq after the end of the year will be the roughly 150 troops needed to protect the large U.S. Embassy compound in Baghdad and its thousands of American diplomats and other personnel, as well as provide training related to new military sales and other tasks.
“The rest of our troops in Iraq will come home at the end of the year,” Obama said Friday at the White House. “After nearly nine years, America’s war in Iraq will be over.”
via All U.S. troops to leave Iraq by the end of 2011 – The Washington Post.
I have some very mixed feelings on this little news story. In fact, my entire basis for returning to writing since my childhood days; as I was very good in English in school – and for my foray into the world of political blogging in the first place — was this subject right here —- Iraq.
As my about me page does say, I was not always a blogger on the right. I still do not consider myself a “Republican,” although I do find myself voting for them now, more than I do Democrats. This is because the Democrats are on the wrong side of the argument, polices that the Democrats have tried have failed miserably, as bloggers as myself predicted that they would. However, when I came into this thing called “blogging,” I was not in the camp of the Conservative thought. I came into this thing called blogging with fierce anger at President George W. Bush.
I was right then about George W. Bush and I still feel that I am; however, I am a bit more educated into what the motivating forces were behind the invasion of Iraq and I no longer believe the idiotic nonsense peddled by the far left about Bush and the invasion of Iraq. Put simply, we invaded Iraq, based upon some very bad intelligence from Germany. There was not plan to lie to the American people, so that we could invade Iraq to please Israel, which is what the far left believes in this Country. Which is a talking point that is rooted in fallacy and in an Anti-Jewish and Anti-Israel bias that exists on the far left and in some quarters of the far right as well.
The main underlining factor in the decision to go into Iraq was a foreign policy stance that I feel is one of the worst ever conceived by man — Wilsonian foreign policy. I believed that the day I pressed the “Create Blog” button over on blogger.com to create my first blog originally called “The Populist Moderate” and I still believe that today. Although, at the time, I did not know what it was called, I just knew something was not right and I felt the need to speak out about it.
AllahPundit over at HotAir.com notes some very interesting ramifications over this decision by the President’s decision to pull our troops out of Iraq. The political angle is that Obama actually wants to be reelected in 2012. Not that this will help him at all; the liberal left still will not vote again for him, because the economy is still in the proverbial toilet. I said back in 2010 that we were just making it a little harder for Iran to invade and overthrow Iraq; and it appears that I was at least partially correct. Like AllahPundit said, with this new terrorist plot being uncovered against an official of the Saudi Government, it looks like Iraq might be the new battleground for a proxy war between Iran and the Saudi Government.
Overall, it essentially looks as if Obama decided that if he could not get what he wanted from the Iraqi Government; that he essentially said, “Screw them, and let them deal with their own problems.” Which at first glance, might be a good thing, but when you really look at it, it does not look good at all. All the world would need right now is a horrible war between the Saudis and the Iranians. You think the gas shortage of the 1970’s was bad; you wait until the Saudis and Iranians go to war! We will all be driving bikes everywhere. Gas and other such fuels will become luxury items quick. The only people that are most likely breathing a sigh of relief are the Syrians, who are most likely glad that this proxy war will not be fought in their backyards.
So my bottom line is this: While this might be a minor victory for the liberal left; in the long run, this is going to be major pain various places, including our wallets in the very long run.
Update: As I also suspected, but did not write about, because I was not too sure whether it was true or not — we are leaving and it is IRAQ’S idea, not ours:
Former Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, for instance, is a hugely pro-American politician who believes Iraq’s security forces will be incapable of protecting the country without sustained foreign assistance. But in a recent interview, he refused to endorse a U.S. troop extension and instead indicated that they should leave.
“We have serious security problems in this country and serious political problems,” he said in an interview late last month at his heavily guarded compound in Baghdad. “Keeping Americans in Iraq longer isn’t the answer to the problems of Iraq. It may be an answer to the problems of the U.S., but it’s definitely not the solution to the problems of my country.”
Welcome to Post-Iraq Middle East; it is going to be an interesting next few years. 😯
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