Who Lost Iraq?

POLICTO Magazine
June 2015 | POLITICO

For a brief, happy—and misguided—moment, most Americans stopped thinking about Iraq. After withdrawing the last U.S. troops in 2011, President Barack Obama declared the country “sovereign, stable and self-reliant.” No such luck….

“Brian, you were on the Obama campaign. Did you guys come to Iraq with the assumption that it couldn’t be saved, so we had to get out and let it fend for itself? Or was the thinking that Iraq was ready to stand on its own?”

Brian Katulis: “That was a central focus: How does Iraq actually achieve or build on the security gains of the surge? It’s true that the addition of U.S. forces in 2007 had an impact in changing security dynamics, but there were other factors too—including a pretty massive sectarian cleansing campaign that had happened in Baghdad from 2006 to 2008….

“Essentially for a dozen years, the U.S. has been searching for an overarching strategy for its engagement, not only in Iraq but the broader Middle East. One of the consequences of the 2003 Iraq War was that—largely unintended—we upended a policy of dual containment of Iran and Iraq. That inadvertently facilitated the expansion of Iranian influence in the region. Our presence in Iraq created a massive rallying cry and recruitment tool and live training ground for all the sorts of types of groups that we’re now still dealing with.”

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Photo Credit: Iraqi soldiers trained with members of the 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division, at Camp Taji, Iraq. [(U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Cody Quinn, accessed 6/25/2015]