Obama's strategic error in Iraq

Richard Fernandez:

The New York Times writes “Al Qaeda in Iraq Scores Big”. The piece is signed by the editorial board too. It describes the negative consequences of the President’s hasty abandonment of Iraq. But more properly considered, it is an indictment of a whole strategy. For the consequences of that failed plan are rippling not just through Iraq, but North Africa, Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria. Before the end the consequences may spread to Turkey and Saudi Arabia.
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Well let’s not forget the breakouts in Libya or Pakistan either. That last paragraph– “but Iraq might have been better able to repel Al Qaeda if Mr. Maliki and the Americans had worked harder on a deal to keep a token number of troops in the country to continue helping with training and intelligence-gathering ” – is probably as close to eating crow as anything recently published by the Gray Lady. Time to re-excerpt my old post, the Ten Ships, published in May, 2010, which if read, might have made the NYT’s surprise and astonishment at the burgeoning disaster less....
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The “ten ships” of the War on Terror — the enemy’s center of gravity — were never in Afghanistan. It was always in the source of ideology, money and recruits that fueled it. In a word it was in the Middle East and in the Islamic ideology that motivated the terror. That is now painfully clear, even if the administration won’t admit it. But they have as much as done by their actions.

The CIA has announced it is moving from Afghanistan to the Middle East and North Africa. The DOD is talking about military options in Syria. And why heck, even the NYT is worried about the fires in that region raging out of control.

Nobody says “Detroit is alive and al-Qaeda is dead” any more. It’s not funny these days. Not even to the NYT.

Well that’s what you get for redeploying your firefighting assets in an irrational way. What did they expect? What did they expect for not naming the enemy, or even denying its existence? That might have given them a clue to who it was. That’s is what comes of trying to fight the War on Terror as a law enforcement, for substituting cafe talking points for strategy.
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There is much more.  The ten ships he is referring to are part of the Japanese fleet that were targeted by the US after the attack on Pearl Harbor.  Sinking those ships allowed the US to dominate the Pacific and win the war.   His point is that Obama misjudged the enemy's center of gravity by focusing on Afghanistan rather than the Middle East and North Africa.