Obama's disastrous retreat from Iraq

Daniel Greenfield:

As the Obama Administration tries to hammer together an American withdrawal from Afghanistan, the body count from his disastrous retreat from Iraq is swiftly rising. Last week alone there were fourteen car bombings orchestrated by Al-Qaeda in Iraq, whose goal has always been a civil war between Shiites and Sunnis. The bombings, which received only light coverage in a media unwilling to talk about anything that might show their candidate in a bad light, are only one of the fracture points.

A united Iraq died a few days after the withdrawal. The only people who still believe in the fiction of a centrally governed Iraq are holding down desks in the State Department. There are several Iraqs now. There is Iran’s Iraq, the one overseen by Tehran’s puppet in Baghdad, Prime Minister Maliki. Then there is Iraqi Kurdistan which stands on the verge of declaring its independence, an act that will touch off a violent territorial dispute accompanied by ethnic cleansing.

Iraqi federalism is only popular among some in the Shiite majority, for whom it means majority rule. Maliki’s warrant for Sunni Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi and the latter’s subsequent flight and sanctuary in Iraqi Kurdistan has ended the fiction of joint rule in Iraq. The Kurds have branded Maliki a dictator and are swiftly breaking their remaining ties to Baghdad.

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There is much more.

Obama has wasted our efforts in Iraq and is watching things spin out of control  The best that could be hoped for now is that Kurdistan will evolve into a strong independent country that is not dominated by the Shia Arabs.  It will probably be where surviving Sunni Arabs go for sanctuary from a regime that is tied much to closely to Iran.

When the history of these events is written, it will be described as another Obama screw up.