would hold it together. now, prime minister maliki and others made some big mistakes thereafter, and i think president obama was wrong to pull out u.s. troops. but it wasn t going to be easy to stay, and obama did keep forces there for twice as long as he had promised on the campaign trail, along the time frame that president bush himself had sketched out. i would give president obama some criticism there, but not nearly as harsh as so the criticism you leveled at obama is that he followed out the bush plan? well, apparently. he had his own choice, but, yes, it was the logic that had been established before. mr. obama deserves some of the criticism, but not nearly as much as he s getting now. okay, mike, my problem with that argument is you can always say, if we d only stayed a little longer. you can always argue, if we d only stay there had with more troops, more combat troops in the field, you can always argue, but that s the best argument for not going in, because you can ne
and when the iraqi army faces people like isis terrorists, they run like there s no tomorrow. this is a big problem in baghdad. it s poor leadership from the government in baghdad from prime minister abadi s cap in the cabinet. the big problem here as you know is that the government in baghdad which is dominated by the shi a influenced heavily by iran does not have a confidence of the sunni tribes in anbar province. and so if there s going to be a way to bring those sunni tribes into the fight the government in baghdad will have to assure them that they have a share of influence and power in the national government and that s not been the case under prime minister maliki and certainly not under president abadi. so it s a political problem at the root of this and a problem of continued rivalry between the shi a and sunni communities. so ambassador is it time to
argument over knowing what we know now, and jeb bush s attempt to pivot to the question of what was done in 2009? well, i would be delighted to hear what mr. bush propoises we do in the future, since that s what he wants to talk about. i think he ignores if you want to go back to 2009, the fact that it was george bush who negotiated the withdrawal of american troops. which i think was a good thing to do at that time. and it was prime minister maliki who decided he would go ahead and honor that agreement, that the united states would leave in 2011. what is jeb bush going to do? what are the republicans going to do, which arabs are they going to kill this time. after having overthrown a sunni regime in baghdad, and alied themselves with the shiite militias supported by iran. are they going to go out and
like the cold war, that all of a sudden there would be a blooming of democracy and a better country overall. of course in eastern europe the revolutions were typically a lot more peaceful a lot more political, and they were in countries that had stronger institutions that were undergirding the society. i do share some of the criticism of president obama s decision in 2011, but i think it s a much lower magnitude mistake than to go into iraq in 2003 with no significant preparation. and by 2011 there was reason to hope that the iraqis themselves would hold it together. now, prime minister maliki and others made some big mistakes thereafter, and i think president obama was wrong to pull out u.s. troops. but it wasn t going to be easy to stay and obama did keep forces there for twice as long as he had promised on the campaign trail, along the time frame that president bush himself had sketched out. i would give president obama some criticism there, but not nearly as harsh as so the c
incalculable. it s not just syria at this point. the president is now talking about aid to syria. this is not just the syria problem. this is a regional problem. we re talking about iraq, isis moving toward baghdad in a way that resembles in what we saw with the strike we saw in 2004 through 2007 where we had 150,000 u.s. troops, a huge diplomatic presence to turn this around. meanwhile, iraq s most influential cleric made a big announcement today. he called on the government to come up with a new prime minister before the parliament meets next tuesday which would seem to under cut the sitting prime minister maliki. your thoughts about that, charles? well, he s probably the most important event in the idea and in the attempt to change the government. it has to be changed. with maliki, it can only be a sectarian war. supporting the maliki government