Have you have been watching the beltway media's favorite Iraq warmonger, Senator John McCain cry like spoiled child after the Sunni militant group ISIS invaded parts of Iraq?
Sen. John McCain said Thursday that President Barack Obama’s entire national security team should resign over the resurgence of Islamic militants in Iraq.
“Everybody in his national security team, including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, ought to be replaced,” the Arizona Republican told reporters ahead of a classified Senate Armed Services Committee briefing on the deteriorating situation in Iraq. “It’s a colossal failure of American security policy.”
All the horrible Iraq war prognosticators like Michael O'Hanlon have been back on television mouthing off like the last eleven years never happened. They all are saying that we should have left 15,000 troops in Iraq for no unspecified time to protect the fledgling democracy. Funny how none of them have mentioned that Iraq has a say in what happens on its own soil because of freedom!!! In 2011, Iraq refused to allow American troops to be stationed there any longer. Wasn't that what John McCain wanted our troops to fight over there for? Even if President Obama demanded that we leave troops behind he had no authority to make that happen. But funny enough, McCranky never does mention that little tidbit when he whines and complains.
Luckily we have a Google time machine.
U.S. Troops Are Leaving Because Iraq Doesn't Want Them There
President Obama's speech formally declaring that the last 43,000 U.S. troops will leave Iraq by the end of the year was designed to mask an unpleasant truth: The troops aren't being withdrawn because the U.S. wants them out. They're leaving because the Iraqi government refused to let them stay.
Obama campaigned on ending the war in Iraq but had instead spent the past few months trying to extend it. A 2008 security deal between Washington and Baghdad called for all American forces to leave Iraq by the end of the year, but the White House -- anxious about growing Iranian influence and Iraq's continuing political and security challenges -- publicly and privately tried to sell the Iraqis on a troop extension. As recently as last week, the White House was trying to persuade the Iraqis to allow 2,000-3,000 troops to stay beyond the end of the year.
Those efforts had never really gone anywhere; One senior U.S. military official told National Journal last weekend that they were stuck at "first base" because of Iraqi reluctance to hold substantive talks.
Former Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, for instance, is a hugely pro-American politician who believes Iraq's security forces will be incapable of protecting the country without sustained foreign assistance. But in a recent interview, he refused to endorse a U.S. troop extension and instead indicated that they should leave.
"We have serious security problems in this country and serious political problems," he said in an interview late last month at his heavily guarded compound in Baghdad. "Keeping Americans in Iraq longer isn't the answer to the problems of Iraq. It may be an answer to the problems of the U.S., but it's definitely not the solution to the problems of my country."
I'm sure John McCain will be back on all the Sunday shows to continue his disingenuous dance about the state of Iraq. If anything, he's one of the architects of this epic foreign policy disaster.
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