While some on the American Left have doubted the significance of Obama's final Iraq withdrawal next month, the American Right -- and especially the neocons -- have complained loudly. On Friday, Charles Krauthammer, part of the Washington Post's vast stable of neocon writers, framed the attack on Obama as "Who lost Iraq?"
Columnist Charles Krauthammer
To make the case of blaming Obama, Krauthammer relied on the neocon-constructed narrative of the Iraq War: that after a string of early mistakes, the war was "won" by George W. Bush's "surge" in 2007 and that Bush's "status of forces agreement" with Iraq, which called for the U.S. troop withdrawal by 2011, was always meant to be modified to permit a permanent U.S. military presence.
The notion of the "successful surge" leading to "victory at last" was largely mythical -- the reasons for the decline in Iraqi political violence related more to other factors, including the recognition that the U.S. military occupation was finally coming to an end -- but the "surge" narrative has been useful in cleansing the neocons of the blood and waste caused by the neocon-driven Iraq invasion in 2003.
Now, a new chapter of this neocon Iraq War narrative is being written by Krauthammer and others -- that the Iraq War had been "won" but that Obama and his antiwar allies then stabbed "the troops" in the back by squandering their hard-fought "victory."
Krauthammer wrote:
"When [Obama] became president in January 2009, he was handed a war that was won. The surge had succeeded. ... Obama was left with but a single task: Negotiate a new status-of-forces agreement (SOFA) to reinforce these gains and create a strategic partnership with the Arab world's only democracy. He blew it."Negotiations, such as they were, finally collapsed last month. There is no agreement, no partnership. As of Dec. 31, the U.S. military presence in Iraq will be liquidated. ...
"Three years, two abject failures. The first was the administration's inability, at the height of American post-surge power, to broker a centrist nationalist coalition governed by the major blocs -- one predominantly Shiite (Maliki's), one predominantly Sunni (Ayad Allawi's), one Kurdish ...
"The second failure was the SOFA itself. U.S. commanders recommended nearly 20,000 troops, considerably fewer than our 28,500 in Korea, 40,000 in Japan and 54,000 in Germany. The president rejected those proposals, choosing instead a level of 3,000 to 5,000 troops.
"A deployment so risibly small would have to expend all its energies simply protecting itself ... The Obama proposal was an unmistakable signal of unseriousness. It became clear that he simply wanted out, leaving any Iraqi foolish enough to maintain a pro-American orientation exposed to Iranian influence, now unopposed and potentially lethal."
Krauthammer concluded:
"Three years and a won war had given Obama the opportunity to establish a lasting strategic alliance with the Arab world's second most important power. He failed, though he hardly tried very hard. ... Indeed, he portrays the evacuation as a success, the fulfillment of a campaign promise."Obama was to usher in an era of not hard power, not soft power, but smart power. Which turns out in Iraq to be ... no power. Years from now, we will be asking not 'Who lost Iraq?' -- that already is clear -- but 'Why?'"
Strategic Defeat
In other words, Krauthammer and the neocons "get" what is happening, even though they twist it to fit their propaganda needs. The U.S. withdrawal from Iraq does represent a defeat for the kind of U.S. imperialism that the neocons have long advocated -- and a victory for Americans who have opposed military adventures (and for the Iraqi people who resisted the occupation).
But the truth behind Krauthammer's imperious question "who lost Iraq?" is this: the war in Iraq was "lost" as soon as it was begun in March 2003 -- at least once it became clear that the Iraqis would resist a U.S. military conquest.
Yes, Bush's occupation of Iraq was bungled, too, but it was the determination of the Iraqi people not to accept their status as a modern-day colony and as a base for U.S. power projection in the Middle East that doomed the neocons' imperial project. Millions of Americans also joined in rejecting an illegal war as well as the neocons' hubristic vision of a "New American Century."
Nevertheless, the neocons have now chosen to frame the issue of this strategic U.S. defeat in Iraq as a case of disloyal or feckless Americans, including President Obama, undermining U.S. national security, much as similar "who lost" attack lines were used by the Right regarding China in the 1940s and Vietnam in the 1970s.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
