Why is obama continuing Bush's Iraq war debacle? I voted for him to end that war. He lied.

[jeff47]

13. He was handed an unwinnable situation by the morons who started it.

If the US pulls out, ISIS gets a chunk of Iraq and what used to be Syria. Turkey is pissed because they have a huge problem when Kurdistan is formed from other parts of Iraq and Kurds in Turkey want to secede. And Iran either gets Southeastern Iraq or it becomes an Iranian client state.

If the US stays, we disrupt ISIS and the hope was some other Sunni group would get its shit together enough to displace ISIS with something less barbaric. And maybe Iraq could be turned into some sort of loosely-coupled grouping of autonomous states.

Obviously, the second one is not happening - the other Sunni groups fought each other as much as ISIS, so no less-barbaric group could take power. And Turkey is fucking over our efforts to enlist the help of the Kurds in order to keep Turkish Kurds in line. And the Iraqi Shia are not at all interested in working with Iraqi Sunnis, so that pseudo-state isn't gonna happen either.

It is probably time to give up. We're going to be stuck with the first scenario, and there will be domestic political fallout. Better for Obama to be hit with it than his successor.