And, your original statement which I replied to, "He snatched an epic defeat from the jaws of victory in Iraq.", is simply preposterous. Again, most of the supremely dumb decisions were made, and consequences irrevocably present, well before he took office.
That was me. I blame posting a bit intoxicated, on a tablet so I didn't type much. You're right "from the jaws of victory" is a bit over the top. More like "from a place where victory had gotten a good scent and might have tracked it down in a bit".
I have talked, I think, quite a bit on this board about what Iraq looked like in 08-09, what it looks like now, and some of what I feel the causes were. By Jan. 2009, Iraq was not an easy situation to solve. Many things had gone a little off the tracks, and the Iraqi's were making serious noises about wanting us out. But on the plus side it was pretty much under control. THat control had to be maintained by heavy military force, but we were doing that.
I remember talking with some smart officers during the election (I was deployed for it) and you will recall that "End the War" was a big topic during that election. Sitting there we talked over plans to end the war, from making Iraq a full on colony (kinda an oil rich Puerto Rico), to installing a leader strong enough to Saddam the place while being charismatic enough to fool the west, to just carving it up like Churchill did, but with more concern being paid to tribal and cultural boundaries. The last could throw the Kurds a bone, and we all liked the Kurds.
We didn't have any foolproof ideas, but we were pretty sure that whatever happened, no one would be stupid enough to just.....leave. Everyone knew al-Maliki wasn't ready to hold the place together by himself, no matter what he thought, and we had just spent all that effort, blood and treasure to bring some semblance of control to the place. To just..........leave.
That lack of coherent plan, and letting all of our effort end up wasted is what I was poorly alluding to in my first post. There's never any guarantee in life, certainly not in war, but some effort to try and preserve the control and order that we had fought for would seem to have been in order. Even if it failed.
On the actual subject of my first post: Obama's legacy. I think once the black has worn off a little he'll easily be in the top 5 worst presidents we've ever had.
