Iraq PM to Obama: Could we trouble you to help us before we lose Baghdad?

Three years after Barack Obama abandoned Iraq by refusing to sign a status of forces agreement to keep a U.S. military presence in place there, an Al Qaeda affiliate known as ISIS is now rolling through the country - having already seized the cities of Mosul and Tikrit. And now ISIS is setting its sights on Baghdad, prompting Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to issue a desperate call for American help.

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But it's not the first time, and previous requests haven't yielded much in the way of support:

Iraq has previously asked for drones it could use, but Washington didn't want to supply them to the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, which has close ties to Tehran and has permitted Iran to ship weapons to the Syria regime through Iraqi territory. Officials on Tuesday did not want to discuss specifics of the potential military assistance. "We are not going to get into details of our diplomatic discussions but the Government of Iraq has made clear that they welcome our support in their effort to confront ISIL," National Security Council official Bernadette Meehan told NBC News.

The logic here is mind-boggling. Upon the conclusion of the Iraq War, the Iraqi government asked the U.S. to keep a troop presence in the country. Obama refused. Then Iraq strengthened ties with Iran, which now becomes Obama's excuse not to help Iraq fend off an all-out assault from Al Qaeda that puts the Iraqi capital in jeopardy of being overrun. Dan Henninger of the Wall Street Journal echoes the theme we offered yesterday, which is that Obama simply doesn't care what happens around the world, and particularly in Iraq:

One might ask: Didn't U.S. intelligence know something like Mosul could happen? They did. The February 2014 "Threat Assessment" by the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency virtually predicted it: "AQI/ISIL [aka ISIS] probably will attempt to take territory in Iraq and Syria . . . as demonstrated recently in Ramadi and Fallujah." AQI (al Qaeda in Iraq), the report says, is exploiting the weak security environment "since the departure of U.S. forces at the end of 2011." But to have suggested any mitigating steps to this White House would have been pointless. It won't listen. In March, Gen. James Mattis, then head of the U.S. Central Command, told Congress he recommended the U.S. keep 13,600 support troops in Afghanistan; he was known not to want an announced final withdrawal date. On May 27, President Obama said it would be 9,800 troops—for just one year. Which guarantees that the taking of Mosul will be replayed in Afghanistan. Let us repeat the most quoted passage in former Defense Secretary Robert Gates's memoir, "Duty." It describes the March 2011 meeting with Mr. Obama about Afghanistan in the situation room. "As I sat there, I thought: The president doesn't trust his commander, can't stand Karzai, doesn't believe in his own strategy and doesn't consider the war to be his," Mr. Gates wrote. "For him, it's all about getting out." The big Obama bet is that Americans' opinion-polled "fatigue" with the world (if not his leadership) frees him to create a progressive domestic legacy. This Friday Mr. Obama is giving a speech to the Sioux Indians in Cannon Ball, N.D., about "jobs and education." Meanwhile, Iraq may be transforming into (a) a second Syria or (b) a restored caliphate. Past some point, the world's wildfires are going to consume the Obama legacy. And leave his successor a nightmare.

The whole idea that we have an interest in protecting the security of our allies is anathema to Obama. He doesn't think Iraq ever should have been an ally in the first place. That only came about as a result of George W. Bush's war, and what a drag it is for Obama to have to do anything in support of this ill-begotten alliance when he's busy trying to spin his way out of the VA, Bergdahl, Benghazi and IRS messes, not to mention issuing executive orders to combat "climate change" (an enemy he actually cares about, even if it exists only in his mind) and concoct justifications for the coming explosions of people's health insurance premiums. Hey, if we lose the constitutional government in Iraq, well we never should have brought it about in the first place. It sounds like the administration is getting ready to all but abandon the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, according to The Blaze:

The U.S. official told TheBlaze that the U.S. Embassy, United Nations and other foreign organizations with a presence in Iraq are “preparing contingency plans to evacuate employees.” Mortar rounds and rockets have hit Baghdad International Airport and Mosul’s airport has been the target of militant assault. The State Department advisory warned U.S. citizens to avoid public gathering places because of the high risk of kidnapping and terrorist violence. A U.S. counterterrorism official said the violence has reached “levels not seen since 2007.”

Even if the U.S. steps in now with airstrikes or some other action that keeps ISIS on the outskirts of Baghdad, the terrorists will already have done enough damage that Iraq can scarcely function as the constitutional republic it was trying to be. And it's easy to predict how Democrats will spin this. They will say that George W. Bush's ill-conceived fiasco based on WMD lies was destined to fail, and that you can't expect Barack Obama (who opposed Bush's war, don't you know?) to be responsible for the inevitable. This is all a load of crap, of course. There were a lot of mistakes made in the execution of the Iraq War (as there are in any war), but by the time Bush left office Iraq was free and relatively peaceful. The broader strategic objective of fighting the Iraq War was not about WMDs, although that was the narrative that was used (foolishly in my opinion) in the attempt to sell it to the UN Security Council. Rather, the objective was to establish ties in a post-9/11 world with nations that had previously been overrun by tyranny and terrorism, boosting U.S. influence in the region by introducing freedom and democracy, and consequently the opportunity for the people of the region to make a choice to reject violence. That type of thinking is very much out of fashion today. Even in allegedly "conservative" circles, Ron Paul sycophants are hyping isolationism under the label of "non-interventionism" and using Iraq as the justification for this thinking. But in fact, what's happening in Iraq today demonstrates our need to remain engaged in the world. Obama got what he wanted in Iraq, which is to say, he got out. He desperately wants events overseas not to be his problem because he has a socialist utopia to build at home and he can't be bothered. Global leadership doesn't work that way, of course, which is why Obama wants to de-emphasize America's role as a global leader. The fact is that Bush and Cheney were right, even if their execution wasn't flawless. The U.S. needs to be engaged in the world, and needs to forcefully counter elements like ISIS who will not hesitate to overrun our allies and institute Islamic tyranny. It's especially ironic that libertarians who claim to believe "liberty is the answer to everything" don't think it matters if liberty is denied to people around the world. That can only be true if the U.S. can exist in isolation, which gives the lie to their claim that they are not isolationists. I pray it's not too late to save Iraq. But it really doesn't matter if, as it now appears, we have a president who doesn't even care to try.