This afternoon marked the official end of the Iraq war as the last U.S. brigade combat team has left Iraq! While there are still 56000 troops US troops in the country it is no longer the debacle that Bush led us into. We will also be paying for this war of choice for many years to come, but at least it is over! Kudos to President Obama!
4 thoughts on “Another Promise kept, another bush mess cleaned up…”
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I guess when everything else is a mess and you’re creating more messes, you have to take credit for something.
Thank goodness President Bush did not listen to Senator Obama and the other Democrats who were against the surge and he went ahead and was able to win the war in Iraq.
On January 10, 2007, the night the surge was announced, Obama declared, “I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq are going to solve the sectarian violence there. In fact, I think it will do the reverse.” A week later, he insisted the surge strategy would “not prove to be one that changes the dynamics significantly.” And in reaction to the president’s January 23 State of the Union address, Obama said,
I don’t think the president’s strategy is going to work. We went through two weeks of hearings on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; experts from across the spectrum–military and civilian, conservative and liberal–expressed great skepticism about it. My suggestion to the president has been that the only way we’re going to change the dynamic in Iraq and start seeing political commendation is actually if we create a system of phased redeployment. And, frankly, the president, I think, has not been willing to consider that option, not because it’s not militarily sound but because he continues to cling to the belief that somehow military solutions are going to lead to victory in Iraq.
In July, after evidence was amassing that the surge was working, Obama said, “My assessment is that the surge has not worked.”
In July of 2008 Obama wrote a New York Times op-ed in which he acknowledged the success of the surge. “In the 18 months since President Bush announced the surge,” Obama wrote, “our troops have performed heroically in bringing down the level of violence. New tactics have protected the Iraqi population, and the Sunni tribes have rejected Al Qaeda–greatly weakening its effectiveness.” A day later, Obama gave a speech in which he declared for the first time that “true success” and “victory in Iraq” were possible. In addition, the Obama campaign scrubbed its presidential website to remove criticism of the surge.
Actually it seems the pressure to resolve the Iraq war brought up during the campaign forced the Bush Administration to basically negotiate a withdrawal timetable roughly equivalent to then Senator Obama’s campaign pledge.
There is a difference though, between negotiating a timeline and following it through. Bush did not have a strong track record of following through!