Is this a sad joke?:
The Obama administration acknowledges the setbacks in Iraq.
"On the battlefield, it cannot be considered a success," said Robert Beecroft, former U.S. ambassador to Iraq, at a Senate committee hearing Wednesday
By Clara Ritger 6-11-14
"What was the point of all that?"
Perry asks of U.S. action as Mosul and Tikrit fall to extremists.
Americans are tired of war. For the 17 members of Congress who served in Iraq, that means watching helplessly as the cities they fought for fall once more to extremists.
Militants believed to be associated with al-Qaida overtook Mosul, the second-largest city in Iraq, on Tuesday. The group then seized Tikrit, hometown of former President Saddam Hussein, on Wednesday.
Three Republican congressmen who served in Iraq—Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, Doug Collins of Georgia, and Brad Wenstrup of Ohio—said it feels like the progress they made has been thrown away.
"Going out across the desert I remember the feelings that you have, wondering if you're going to make it out alive," Perry said. "Right now I wonder what that was all about. What was the point of all of that?"
A security agreement was what Perry, Collins, and Wenstrup wanted to see come out of the war, one that would allow U.S. troops to remain involved in the region when the enemy—thought to be the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria—returned.
"We have an enemy today that senses weakness, knows how to find it, and then goes after it," Wenstrup said. "I think Iraq maybe thought they could [defend themselves]. This was an opportunity for us to have another ally in the region. I came home from Iraq feeling that we liberated 25 million people."
But that freedom is in jeopardy, Wenstrup said, if Iraqi citizens cannot or will not fight back.
And none of the congressmen thought there was much the United States could do.
"I think at this point the administration made a choice to cut and run," Collins said. "When Fallujah fell again, we knew this foreign policy had consequences.
-go to links-
No comments:
Post a Comment