Hat Tip-email.
Set forth below are two quotes to keep in mind as you absorb what is currently happening in Iraq. Bush was responding to critics’ calls to leave Iraq, Obama was responding to critics’ calling for forces to stay in Iraq.
President George W. Bush, 2007:
“To begin withdrawing before our commanders tell us we are ready … would mean surrendering the future of Iraq to al Qaeda. It would mean that we’d be risking mass killings on a horrific scale. It would mean we’d allow the terrorists to establish a safe haven in Iraq to replace the one they lost in Afghanistan. It would mean increasing the probability that American troops would have to return at some later date to confront an enemy that is even more dangerous.”
President Barack Obama, December 2011:
“We’re leaving behind a sovereign, stable, and self-reliant Iraq with a representative government that was elected by its people. We’re building a new partnership between our nations. And we are ending a war, not with a final battle, but with a final march toward home. This is an extraordinary achievement, nearly nine years in the making.”
One saw the world as it is; the other how he says it is and, therefore, it must be.
It’s unbelievably tragic.
It’s ironic that we went in there in the first place to prevent massacres and our withdrawl has precipitated a massacre.