You can be as critical of Obama as you like, I don't care, I think it was a failed presidency, but withdrawing from Iraq, ASAP, was not one of its failures, that was one of his few laudible accomplishments.Hanarchy Montanarchy wrote:
The withdraw from Iraq allowed the Syrian civil war which could then bounce back into Iraq... fine, but you were just arguing that the Syrian civil war happens no matter what, and thus, American troops couldn't stop ISIS from growing.
Setting aside the mandate, since it doesn't matter here, the question is, "how do you get an ISIS if the US maintains an occupying force in Iraq."
And we aren't even addressing whether US meddling in the Syrian conflict help to perpetuate it. It is possible Assad just puts the but on and mops up the rebels before any apocalyptic cult can take off and start claiming to be a Caliphate.
There are a couple of places to be critical of the administration beyond the withdraw from Iraq.
ISIS was not going to be stopped when it rampaged into the Anbar in 2011, by the skeleton crew of US troops left, which were in the process of pulling out, and it wasn't going be ejected from the Anbar, unless Obama essentially reinvaded Iraq, against the will of the Shia government in Bagdad, which was backed up by the Iranian Quds Force, so I would submit, that would have been a collosal mistake, even if ISIS be your mandate, because it would have been too late to stop ISIS from exploding by then, they were already on the march.