A lot has gone wrong in Iraq and Iran and more information is out that shows more went wrong than we thought.
Emma Sky is a British, Oxford-educated political analyst who served as a humanitarian worker in the Middle East for a decade before helping the US rebuild Iraq. Her new book, "The Unraveling: High Hopes and Missed Opportunities in Iraq," is not kind to the Obama administration's handling of Iraq.
Somehow, from 2007 to 2010, Sky was the political adviser to U.S. Gen. Ray Odierno when he served as deputy American commander in Iraq and then the US-led mission's top commander. During Sky's time with Odierno, violence in the country plummeted after a U.S. troop surge and crucial Sunni tribal cooperation stabilized the country. Odierno "wanted U.S. engagement with Iraq to continue for years to come, but led by U.S. civilians, not the military," Sky wrote. He estimated 20,000 or so U.S. troops would be needed to stay in Iraq beyond 2011.
The Obama administration, however, eventually went along with the plan backed by Qassem Suleimani, the head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard's Quds Force. That plan called for no U.S. troops beyond 2011 and relied on the continued support of the authoritarian Iran-backed regime of Nouri al-Maliki, then Iraq's prime minister. Maliki's new lease on life led him to steer Baghdad "toward a very pro-Iranian and sectarian agenda, which inevitably disillusioned and disenfranchised Sunni Arabs for a second time."
The rise of ISIS is partly a manifestation of this Sunni discontent.
"The Obama administration wanted to see an Iraqi government in place before the U.S. midterm elections in November," Sky said. "Biden believed the quickest way to form a government was to keep Maliki as prime minister and to cajole other Iraqis into accepting this." Despite the best efforts of Sky and her colleagues, she could not convince the administration otherwise.
Emma Sky is a British, Oxford-educated political analyst who served as a humanitarian worker in the Middle East for a decade before helping the US rebuild Iraq. Her new book, "The Unraveling: High Hopes and Missed Opportunities in Iraq," is not kind to the Obama administration's handling of Iraq.
Somehow, from 2007 to 2010, Sky was the political adviser to U.S. Gen. Ray Odierno when he served as deputy American commander in Iraq and then the US-led mission's top commander. During Sky's time with Odierno, violence in the country plummeted after a U.S. troop surge and crucial Sunni tribal cooperation stabilized the country. Odierno "wanted U.S. engagement with Iraq to continue for years to come, but led by U.S. civilians, not the military," Sky wrote. He estimated 20,000 or so U.S. troops would be needed to stay in Iraq beyond 2011.
The Obama administration, however, eventually went along with the plan backed by Qassem Suleimani, the head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard's Quds Force. That plan called for no U.S. troops beyond 2011 and relied on the continued support of the authoritarian Iran-backed regime of Nouri al-Maliki, then Iraq's prime minister. Maliki's new lease on life led him to steer Baghdad "toward a very pro-Iranian and sectarian agenda, which inevitably disillusioned and disenfranchised Sunni Arabs for a second time."
The rise of ISIS is partly a manifestation of this Sunni discontent.
"The Obama administration wanted to see an Iraqi government in place before the U.S. midterm elections in November," Sky said. "Biden believed the quickest way to form a government was to keep Maliki as prime minister and to cajole other Iraqis into accepting this." Despite the best efforts of Sky and her colleagues, she could not convince the administration otherwise.
"Biden was a nice man, but he simply had the wrong instincts on Iraq," Sky writes. "If only Obama had paid attention to Iraq ... But his only interest in Iraq was in ending the war."
Tim Arango, the Baghdad bureau chief for The New York Times, told Reddit in September that "after 2011 the administration basically ignored the country. And when officials spoke about what was happening there they were often ignorant of the reality."
"In the Arabic media, there was confusion as to why the United States and Iran should both choose Maliki as prime minister, and this fueled conspiracy theories about a secret deal between those two countries," Sky noted. (Much from Yahoo)
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