The Judgement of the Dali 'Bama: Mass Graves edition

O! the humanity! The Indifference!

[rquoter]Obama Overflies Iraqi Mass Graves

Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama overflew the Iraqi cities of Baghdad and Najaf today, where the mass graves for an estimated 240,000 victims of sectarian violence killed since 2007 were visible even from altitude.

Senator Obama was on his way to meet with American soldiers completing the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq in Kuwaiti ports, while miles away Iranian and Saudi delegations were meeting in an emergency summit in Kuwait City in an effort to keep the Iraqi Civil War from boiling over into open regional conflict. Both sides have accused the other of providing advanced weaponry and training, while faulting American leaders for the bloody collapse of the Iraqi state.

Except, of course, none of that really happened.

Barack Obama is in Baghdad today for one reason and one reason only: the current President wisely ignored the first-term Senator's repeated calls to abandon the Iraqi people, and instead listened to advice to change commanders, strategy, and tactics in Iraq. The resulting COIN doctrine implemented by American forces under General David Petraeus and a surge of American forces into Iraq coincided with a popular Sunni revolt against the al Qaeda-led insurgency known as the Awakening movement, which was followed by the fracturing of the Shia Madhi Army and other militant groups.

If we had listened to Barack Obama in 2002, Saddam Hussein (or his murderous son Qusay) would still be brutally repressing hundreds of thousands of Iraqi Shiites and Kurds, and some of the world's most accomplished terrorists (such as Abu Abbas, 1993 WTC bomber Abdul Rahman Yasin, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi) would still be calling Iraq home. I doubt Obama would be flying to Baghdad.

If we had listened to him in 2005-2006 when things were at their worst, then the nightmare scenario of an open Iraqi civil war fought with the backing of Saudi Arabia and Iran and verging on a wider regional war would possibly be playing out. I doubt Obama would be flying to Baghdad.

So by all means, let the journalists of the New York Times paint his visit as an accomplishment of some sort.

Just keep in mind that if we had followed the starter Senator's judgment at any point during his political career, Iraq could have been too dangerous a place for his flight to even consider touching down.[/rquoter]