After 12 years of US setbacks, Obama joins the search for an Iraq strategy
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Counting the cost
By any fair measure, all of these US efforts in Iraq have been failures.
The new Iraqi Army, it turned out, was loaded with officers promoted based on loyalty to Shiite political parties rather than merit – and "ghost" soldiers not required to train or fight in exchange for sharing their salaries with superiors. That was a key reason the Islamic State army so handily defeated the Iraqi military in Mosul, the country's second-largest city, a year ago, and why it holds it today. The recent fall of Ramadi, a provincial capital about 70 miles west of Baghdad, was another example. Meanwhile, the military vacuum is filled by Shiite militias, many of whose members participated in bloody purges of Sunnis in Baghdad and other cities a few years ago.
While the US surge achieved its short-term objective of tamping down Iraq's sectarian civil war, long-term stability wasn't achieved. Why? Iraq's political leaders, most importantly members of Iraq's Shiite Arab majority, weren't interested in political reconciliation. Leaders like Maliki were eager to relegate Sunni Arabs to second class as payback for the brutal treatment of their community during Saddam's reign.
As a result, Bush and Obama could goad Iraqi politicians about the need for inclusiveness and justice, but had no power to force them to make the compromises that might have helped Iraq prevent the current crisis.
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Security-Watch/Backchannels/2015/0609/After-12-years-of-US-setbacks-Obama-joins-the-search-for-an-Iraq-strategy
