Over at Hot Air, Ed Morrissey reports on a conversation
between Dexter Filkins and Hugh Hewitt. (Via Maggie’s Farm)
Filkens covered Iraq, among other things, for The New York
Times. Now he does the same at The New Yorker. He has been a critic of the Iraq
War, but has reported honestly and objectively about the situation in that country.
Morrissey introduces him:
… in 2008, while at the NYT, he wrote extensively about the success of the surge just a few months before the
presidential election. A month later, Filkins wrote again about the “literally unrecognizable” and peaceful Iraq produced
by the surge. Six years later, Filkins was among the skeptics reminding people
that the Iraqis’ insistence on negotiating the immunity clause for American
troops was more of a welcome excuse for Obama to choose total
withdrawal — and claim credit for it until this year — rather than the deal-breaker Obama now declares that it was.
The last line should not be news. Yet, the Obama
administration continues to harp on the notion that the Iraqis made it
impossible for us to stay, thus to negotiate a Status of Forces Agreement.
Here is Filkins’ description of the results of President
Obama’s withdrawal policy. He told Hewitt:
We left, the United States left in 2011. We went
to zero, and we left. I mean, we packed up and left. So when you drive around
Baghdad now, there is not a trace that the United States was ever there, and I
mean apart from the American weapons, but in terms of like American presence
and projects and guidance, gone. And I think that we spent almost a decade
there. We paid with a lot of lives and a lot of blood, and building,
essentially, rebuilding the Iraqi state that we destroyed. And I don’t think it
was ready. I mean, it just wasn’t ready to function on its own. And it couldn’t
function without us. And actually, Ambassador Crocker, who was on your show,
had a really good description of it. He said you know, we build ourselves into
the hard drive of the place, and so we, the United States, were the honest
broker. We were the only people that could sort of bring all the Iraqi factions
together, and then we left. You know, and so the thing doesn’t work without us.
And you can see that in Iraq at a micro level, like when I talked to that
deserter, who said as soon as the Americans left, the commanders started
stealing all the money and everybody left, and everything fell apart. Or you
can see it at the macro level. I mean, that’s what’s happened to the Iraqi
state.
Exactly. We left a well-equipped but green security force, and a divided society without recourse to a neutral arbitrator. Premature evacuation has consequences, not the least of which it is the cause of many failed relationships.
ReplyDeleteUgh, the blame game does get tiresome.
ReplyDeleteEveryone who thinks we should spend more U.S. dollars and lives protecting a Iran-sponsored government in Iraq, raise your hand.
Every who is NOT concerned about Saudi Arabia sponsoring ISIS, raise your hand.
Everyone who says the 2003 war in Iraq wasn't about oil, raise your hand.
Everyone who sees the U.S. borrowing money from China so we can protect the free flow of oil to China, raise your hand.
The real question isn't whether we can police the world for another year or two, but who will fill in the power vacuum after we finish bankrupting ourselves. I'm betting on 2021 right now, with the fun starting in 2017, if we're lucky, for a 30th anniversary for the fall of the USSR.