Great tweet

[Spartanmack]

I wouldn't say I'm neither defending nor criticizing Obama, and I have no idea what McCain would have done with regards to the Bush timeline had he been elected.

I thought per Gates's is advisements the drawdown was delayed for a while.

The tweet in the OP claims that the drawdown directly led to the rise of ISIS. To me, that's kind of an "if frogs had wings" speculation.

None of Bush, Cheney, Gates, or McCain recommended keeping troops in Iraq as a deterrent to something that didn't even exist at the time.

EDIT: I should metre my hyperbole. It didn't exist as anything that anyone considered relevant until 2013.

ISIS may not have been an existential threat at the time but that doesn't mean the country was stable enough for our withdrawal. Based on the advise from military leaders, it seems some people with a great deal of knowledge felt the decision to leave was unwise. It seems Obama put more weight on Ben Rhodes telling him to be on the right side of history then people who actually knew what was going on on the ground in Iraq - how's that for hyperbole?

 

[tinselwolverine]

ISIS may not have been an existential threat at the time but that doesn't mean the country was stable enough for our withdrawal. Based on the advise from military leaders, it seems some people with a great deal of knowledge felt the decision to leave was unwise. It seems Obama put more weight on Ben Rhodes telling him to be on the right side of history then people who actually knew what was going on on the ground in Iraq - how's that for hyperbole?

Maybe so.

Maliki did want us out there, and there was mounting political pressure on him to make that happen- from the Cato Institute commentary linked to in post #9:

...the Maliki government turned down the Obama administration. The president?s critics assert that he could have reached an agreement, but how? By snapping his fingers? Waving a magic wand?

Retired general Jack Keane recently observed that the 2010 elections in Iraq meant that ?you couldn?t get elected? if you supported a continued U.S. presence after 2011??your opponents would tear you apart for it.?

I don't know what would have happened if the U.S. forces had remained in Iraq against the will of the very Iraqi government the U.S. had ostensibly put in place.

 

[Thumb]

a handful of characters? apparently you missed the link.

I saw the link, I said twitter, which is limited to 140 total characters including spaces.

For a guy who thinks he's so smart, I don't know why this was a puzzle to you. I'm sure everyone else who read it understood perfectly.

 

[Spartanmack]

I saw the link, I said twitter, which is limited to 140 total characters including spaces.

For a guy who thinks he's so smart, I don't know why this was a puzzle to you. I'm sure everyone else who read it understood perfectly.

I wasn't puzzled by it, I was pointy out the stupidity of it. There was more to it than just a tweet of 140 characters because there was a link to an article. You don't have to be too smart to figure that out - apparently just a bit smarter than you.

 

[Thumb]

I wasn't puzzled by it, I was pointy out the stupidity of it. There was more to it than just a tweet of 140 characters because there was a link to an article. You don't have to be too smart to figure that out - apparently just a bit smarter than you.

:tup:

 

[Spartanmack]

:tup:

boy, you got me there!