The War That Dare Not Speak Its Name For all his promises to get America out, Obama’s legacy is a renewed war in Iraq.By William McGurn
http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-war-that-dare-not-speak-its-name-1480378036
When David Petraeus appeared Monday at Trump Tower for a meeting with the president-elect, the headlines naturally fixated on whether the retired Army general and former CIA chief would serve as secretary of state for the incoming administration.
Certainly Mr. Trump’s choice here will be one of his most consequential cabinet picks. But the appearance of Mr. Petraeus carries an even more striking implication. Because his presence is a reminder of a painful truth that Mr. Trump, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton all found easier to ignore throughout the 2016 election campaign.
The truth is this: America is still at war in Iraq.
All throughout the campaign, Mr. Trump rightly thumped both President Obama and Mrs. Clinton for their refusal to use the I-word—Islamist—when speaking of the terror threat against the American people. But when it came to the W-word—war—Mr. Trump was not much better.
In three presidential debates, neither Mr. Trump nor Mrs. Clinton used the word war to describe the fighting in Iraq in which our troops are now engaged. When they did use the word, the context was almost always frozen in 2002.
There are political reasons for this. Mrs. Clinton, for example, is well aware that the Bernie Sanders wing of her party regards her as a latter-day Dr. Strangelove. So when she did talk about war and Iraq, it was mostly to declare that her Senate vote to authorize it was a mistake she deeply regrets.
Mr. Trump mostly fixated on the past as well. On almost every occasion the Iraq war came up, Mr. Trump used the opportunity to insist he’d opposed it from the start.
Unfortunately this obsession with re-litigating the invasion of Iraq tells us nothing about where we are today in Iraq, much less about what U.S. policy should be going forward.
Even President Obama has been forced to reconsider his approach by realities on the ground, notwithstanding earlier claims that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are behind us. Characteristically, he’s chosen to adjust on the sly, by slowing down U.S. troop withdrawals from Afghanistan and sneaking American forces back into Iraq.
The truth today is that the Middle East Mr. Trump inherits is more violent and less stable than the one Mr. Obama inherited from George W. Bush in 2009. Perhaps the best thing Mr. Trump could do in his inaugural address would be to acknowledge the reality Mr. Obama has tried to hide: After eight years of an administration that prides itself on getting America out of wars, we are going back in.
Unfortunately, under Mr. Obama we are not doing so honestly.
As Gen. Jack Keane recently noted in an interview with National Public Radio, despite calling the defeat of Islamic State his top priority, President Obama has not asked his commanders for a plan to do so. Over on Capitol Hill, meanwhile, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Mac Thornberry, points out that the president isn’t paying for his troops either, even as he expands their mission. On top of this, for months the Obama administration couldn’t even bring itself to admit that American troops killed by Islamic State were combat deaths. CONTINUE AT SITE
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