Despite Republican attacks, Obama is 'very clear on the lessons of Iraq'

Rss@dailykos.com (laura Clawson) · Friday, May 22, 2015, 12:44 pm
.
The official Republican talking point on Iraq and the extremist group known as ISIS is that everything would be peachy if only President Obama had continued the policies of George W. Bush. Except not the policy where Bush negotiated a withdrawal timeline and Obama stuck with it. The policy where Bush would have ignored that plan and continued occupying Iraq if he darn well felt like it.
.
All of this, not just the part where Rick Santorum advocates "bomb[ing] them back to the 7th century," is ridiculous, yet Obama remained characteristically calm and polite in answering some of those claims in an interview with Jeffrey Toobin. "I’m very clear on the lessons of Iraq," Obama said. "I think it was a mistake for us to go in in the first place, despite the incredible efforts that were made by our men and women in uniform."
.
But, he argued, at some point Iraq has to find its own way:
.

I know that there are some in Republican quarters who have suggested that I’ve overlearned the mistake of Iraq, and that, in fact, just because the 2003 invasion did not go well doesn’t argue that we shouldn’t go back in. And one lesson that I think is important to draw from what happened is that if the Iraqis themselves are not willing or capable to arrive at the political accommodations necessary to govern, if they are not willing to fight for the security of their country, we cannot do that for them. We can be effective allies. [...]

.
But we can’t do it for them, and one of the central flaws I think of the decision back in 2003 was the sense that if we simply went in and deposed a dictator, or simply went in and cleared out the bad guys, that somehow peace and prosperity would automatically emerge, and that lesson we should have learned a long time ago. And so the really important question moving forward is: How do we find effective partners—not just in Iraq, but in Syria, and in Yemen, and in Libya—that we can work with, and how do we create the international coalition and atmosphere in which people across sectarian lines are willing to compromise and are willing to work together in order to provide the next generation a fighting chance for a better future?

.
Gee, rejecting permanent occupation, letting other countries govern themselves, trying to be an ally rather than a conqueror, and trying to build coalitions. How dare he have an answer that doesn't start with bombs and end with massive troop commitments?

.
Source