The Obama administration has deployed another 600 US troops to his Iraqi war, bringing the total US combat troops in Iraq to 4,647, which doesn’t include temporary deployments. The latest deployment follows 200 troops sent in April supposedly to advise Iraqi government forces and about 600 more in July. The term “advisers” harkens back to Vietnam where the Lyndon Baines Johnson administration deployed over 450,000 American troops. More than 58,000 of them were killed in action.
Obama created 2011 vacuum that led to ISIS
Mr. Obama withdrew all American troops from Iraq in 2011 only to see the quick rise of ISISwhich today occupies over 35 countries and has been involved in hundreds of terrorist acts in the United States and across Europe.
Now, with only a few months left in his term, Obama is quietly building American troop strength in Iraq in preparation for a war that will be left to others to manage upon his exit in January. The new Iraqi deployment of U.S. combat troops will complement Iraqi forces that lost Mosul - the second largest city in Iraq - to ISIS in addition to many other Iraqi cities during Obama’s term.
Obama sends more U.S. weapons to warring factions
Mr. Obama, who recently gave Iranian ayatollahs $1.7 billion in unmarked bills, is also sending Apache attack helicopters and HI Mars rocket system components to Iraq along with $415 million for Kurdish Peshmerga fighters. The administration dispatched Defense Secretary Ash Carter earlier this year to play down the administration’s U.S.
troop deployments to the Iraqi war. "The Iraqis are still in the lead. That doesn't change," Carter told Nightly News anchor Lester Holt earlier this year. "Americans are at risk today every single day here. As secretary of defense, I take that more seriously than anything else.
I want our troops to be effective, but I want them also to be as safe as possible consistent with that."
Opponents say Obama doesn't know what he's doing
Opponents argue that there is nothing safe about war, especially in the Middle East. Pundits, generals and just about the entire Republican Party stridently warned the Obama administration about pulling all troops out in 2011 but their pleas fell on deaf ears.
Now, ISIS has become a household word as that terrorist organization carries out horrific jihadist events around the world. Experts are skeptical that Obama’s pinprick airstrikes and too-little-too late deployments are sufficient to destroy ISIS. The notion that Iraq still hasn’t taken its second largest city back from ISIS is fueling such criticism.
In any case, Mr. Obama will be out of office and the entire debacle will be handed off to the next administration to solve. Hillary Clinton - who as senator voted for the original Iraqi war and as Secretary of State presided over the rise of ISIS - and Donald Trump, who says he will end the new Iraqi war successfully for the United States, are the two top-tier candidates in the upcoming 2016 presidential election.
