If you check today’s Google headlines, the lead stories all revolve around the president’s authorizing air strikes on the ISIS forces that have pinned tens of thousands of civilians on a mountain in Iraq’s Kurdish region.
A tweet by Pentagon Press Secretary Rear Adm. John Kirby confirms the same:
US military aircraft conduct strike on ISIL artillery. Artillery was used against Kurdish forces defending Erbil, near US personnel.
— Rear Adm. John Kirby (@PentagonPresSec) August 8, 2014
The only problem with the story is that the war in Iraq “ended” in 2011, when the last of the U.S. combat forces were withdrawn from the region. It was such a momentous personal victory for the Obama administration that the the Twitter account of Obama for America boasted about it during his campaign for reelection in 2012.
The original tweet is long gone, but vestiges of it remain and have been dredged up as a sober reminder by several Twitter users, including one that posts under the handle Young Conservative:
President Obama ended the war in Iraq… Oooppsss were going back in because of his failed foreign policies!! #tcot pic.twitter.com/v4t38iYhLY — Young Conservative™ (@steve0423) August 8, 2014
The problem with the boast and the whole silly business of “honorably ending” a war (as Obama referred to it yesterday) is that, militarily, no such animal exists. A war ends either in victory or defeat. What the president did in Iraq is known as unilateral surrender. He tried to sell it as something else to the American people, enough of whom foolishly bought his song and dance to give him a second term.
Now, all Americans are paying the price.
