Obama Ignored Pleas From Generals To Keep U.S. Forces In IraqOne mistake the generals made is assuming Obama did not want Iraq to go down in flames.Quote:
The last American commander in Iraq recommended to the Obama administration that 23,000 U.S. troops remain to cement the victory, but no deal was ever reached with Baghdad, and all combat forces went home.
That stalemate has come back to haunt the country as al Qaeda-linked extremists, who had been defeated by 2011, have returned to Iraq in a terrorist campaign to capture huge swaths of territory in northern and western areas.
The extremists, known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or ISIS, for Syria), are threatening Baghdad and could be on the verge of creating an enormous terrorist state that menaces the world.
Retired ArmyGen. John M. Keane, who advised commanders in Iraq and helped devise the 2007 troop surge, remembers how the U.S. achieved victory by working hand in hand with Iraq’s military to conduct pinpoint strikes. The effort was so effective that the enemy, al Qaeda in Iraq, stopped sending killers into Iraq because they would be exterminated quickly.
In December 2011, the U.S. military left, led by ArmyGen. Lloyd J. Austin III, who now heads U.S. Central Command and is studying options for helping Baghdad survive absent U.S. combat troops.