IRAQ is threatened by a new wave of sectarian violence as members of the “Sons of Iraq” ”“ the Sunni Awakening militias that were paid by the US to fight Al-Qaeda ”“ begin to rejoin the insurgency.
If the spike in violence continues, it could affect President Barack Obama’s pledge to withdraw all combat troops from Iraqi cities by the end of June. All US troops are due to leave the country by 2012.
A leading member of the Political Council of Iraqi Resistance, which represents six Sunni militant groups, said: “The resistance has now returned to the field and is intensifying its attacks against the enemy. The number of coalition forces killed is on the rise.”
This could all be predicted the moment President Obama announced a specific timeline for our pullout from Iraq. A classic case of what’s good in terms of American domestic policy being a disaster abroad. I cannot think of a surer way to restart the civil war than his timetable announcement. Had he simply done it without making the big announcement, our troops would have been infinitely safer and this serious uptick in violence could have been avoided. This was the second greatest foreign policy disaster of the new administration — the first being to commit to a struggle in Afghanistan that we cannot possibly hope to win — anymore than the Soviets won it in the 1980s or the British in the 1850s. Iraq was NEVER Vietnam, but if I was looking for a Vietnam in the Middle East, Afghanistan would be a prime candidate. Unfortunately, the mainline media has been so infatuated by the new president that they have not critically analyzed what he’s actually doing in Iraq and Afghanistan.
He can’t say he wasn’t warned. Inexperience refuses to listen to experience from the field. Unfortunately, predictable.
Indeed, I’d lay money on both sides stockpiling weapons and making external alliances with a maddenling pace right now. We’ll still have troops in Iraq, but they won’t be combat troops, just sitting ducks.
Use to be a rule that US military troop movements were always secret. When you start playing politics with military action, people get killed. The lack of critical analysis by our press and the lack of opposition by those who know better, when the announcement of the withdrawal timeline was made, is a mark of infamy that will long live beyond BO’s term at POTUS. He will undoubtedly learn from this bad experience what it means to be Commander-in-Chief (one has to hope, as he obviously presently has no clue). Much of the press and many of the Dems (including Joe Biden) already knew and sat on their hands and kept their mouths closed. Shame on them is too mild an opprobriation.