submitted by Jack
BAGHDAD –The U.S. is abandoning plans to keep U.S. troops in Iraq past a year-end withdrawal deadline, The Associated Press has learned. The decision to pull out fully by January will effectively end more than eight years of U.S. involvement in the Iraq war, despite ongoing concerns about its security forces and the potential for instability.
The decision ends months of hand-wringing by U.S. officials over whether to stick to a Dec. 31 withdrawal deadline that was set in 2008 or negotiate a new security agreement to ensure that gains made and more than 4,400 American military lives lost since March 2003 do not go to waste.
PS: What do you want to bet that Iraq will fall into civil war within 24 months after the last soldier leaves and the entire government will change?
I won’t take that bet. My hunch is that it will take one month.
In any case, I am not sure I care anymore. We didn’t even get any payback or respect for all our loss in sons and treasure in oil for dethroning a vicious, bloodthirsty, destabilizing tyrant. Oil was never the reason, democracy and freedom was. Along with trying to change the face of a centuries long history of tyrant, strong man controlled section of the globe. It seems we have been too ambitious.
It would have been nice to cut a deal. Correct me if I am wrong but the ONLY folks who have benefited from our efforts in terms of oil from Iraq is Europe.
I never thought I would say this. Maybe it is my weariness and disgust with Arabs, Persians, and Islam as a whole. Let Iraq burn. Let them create the hell on earth they are so bent on. Why should I have a problem with Muslims killing Muslims anymore than I have a problem with gangsters killing gangsters in any US city or even Chico? Of course you already know the answer to that, Jack. Flying bullets just a easily hit the innocent bystander as the intended target. I truly am weary.
And so much for the “Arab Spring”. Christians are being attacked and marginalized in Egypt. Muslim factions are killing one another in Tunisia. So it goes.
Let the Middle East burn and just protect the only Democratic, rational country that is there, Israel.
I have to say (I mean, you can never really tell … it’s all a matter of what’s reported and what isn’t) things seem to be fairly subdued in the run-up to withdrawal. There’ve been bombings, but the Iraqi National Army has coped.
A model democracy Iraq will probably never be, but you know what? … I don’t care. I have sweaters, and food growing in my backyard.
Well said Pie, very well said. If there is any vindication left, I think it will be on the home front by those who understood evil. I remember all those young moms walking in the summer evening, some pushing strollers, some with little kids in tow and the kids were holding candles and the moms were carrying the signs, NO BLOOD FOR OIL! The were wrong of course, we know that now. They were so self righteous. Wished I had their names to publish titled, A list of fools.
Pie said it all. Great post!
“If there is any vindication left, I think it will be on the home front by those who understood evil.”
Why console yerselves with conquering “evil”? Bummed about having been completely snookered over the WMD into flushing away three for four trillion?
You take heart. Those oil fields have indeed been wrested away from that wicked man and are secured for your posterity.
Dweebs.
Nicely said Pie.
One lesson to be learned for conservatives…the left cannot be counted on to follow through even when success has been handed to them on a silver platter.
THEY ABANDONED IRAQ, giving America another black eye, doubled down on strikes…civilians be damned…in Afghanistan/Pakistan (so they wouldn’t have to interrogate prisoners or add to the Gitmo rolls), through dog s*#% diplomacy created more unrest and turmoil in the ME than before, empowered Iran and the maniacs that run the place, made the area more dangerous for the only truly freedom loving democracy in the area, Israel…AND THEY DID IT ALL WITH A SENSE OF SMUG SUPERIORITY AND IN THE NAME OF PEACE.
All that’s been done by the man in charge has escaped criticism from his supporters who had no trouble criticizing his predicessor. Instead he is propped up and excused…they just look the other way. Talk about hypocrits, fools…and liars.