On May 25, 2011, The Wall Street Journal reported on its Opinion page about a speech that the highly respected and departing Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, made about Iraq. Here is the final paragraph concerning Mr. Gates remarks:“Lo and behold, Mr. Gates is saying that Iraq is that model, and that even the Obama Administration now sees a democratic Iraq as a potential bulwark for American interests in the Gulf. The rest of the press corps won’t acknowledge it, but Mr. Gates is more or less saying: mission accomplished.”
Now, without a stabilizing force that could have maintained the situation in Iraq, disaster is in the works. According to The New York Times on Thursday, June 12, 2014, “Sunni militants consolidated and extended their control over northern Iraq on Wednesday, seizing Tikrit, the hometown of Saddam Hussein, threatening the strategic oil refining town of Baiji and pushing south toward Baghdad, their ultimate target, Iraqi sources said.”
No matter how one views our actions in Iraq, a Muslim democratic state in the Middle East would have been very possible and certainly like night and day from what the Obama Administration has allowed to happen. After World War II we left behind troops to stabilize the democracies in Germany, Japan, and Italy, with wonderful results. The incompetent and incoherent foreign policy of President Obama is reprehensible.We need leaders with enough vision to lead our military forces in thoughtful ways in order to promote freedom and democracies across the globe.
