Powerful essay in WSJ by Mario Loyola:

http://www.wsj.com/articles/my-iraqi...yal-1432938275

OPINION
COMMENTARY
My Iraqi Friend and the Obama Betrayal

When Islamic State began its murderous attack on Ramadi, I thought of Ismail and worried for his safety.


As the fight to retake Ramadi from Islamic State, also known as ISIS, heats up, I can’t help thinking of my visit to the capital of Iraq’s Anbar province nearly eight years ago, and of America’s broken promises since then.

In September 2007, I was in Ramadi for a gathering of Iraqi and American military commanders, politicians and local tribal leaders who had joined forces with the U.S. to defeat al Qaeda in Iraq. Then-Sen. Joseph Biden was there. “These are difficult days,” he told our Iraqi allies. “But as you are proving, you can forge a future for Iraq that is much brighter than its past. If you continue, we will continue to send you our sons and our daughters, to shed their blood with you and for you.”

It was a noble promise, and Iraqis believed it. The surge in U.S. forces and the “Anbar Awakening” had succeeded beyond all hopes. U.S. troops patrolled casually where just a few months before Marines couldn’t fight their way in. There as a journalist, I walked through one village east of Ramadi where an old vegetable vendor waved to me and said, a grandson smiling on his knee, “Thank you coalition.”

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By the end of 2008, the U.S. and its allies had done the hard work of building a political coalition of Iraqi parties committed to reconciliation and to a long-term alliance with the U.S. I lost touch with Ismail after that, and had every reason to believe he was well.

Then came President Obama, and the end of the fragile reconciliation process in Iraq. At the end of 2011, he withdrew all U.S. forces, ignoring the advice of commanders on the ground and the private pleas of senior Iraqi leaders.

Things fell apart quickly after that. Suicide bombings, a trademark of Sunni terrorism, returned, as did the reprisals of Iranian-backed militias. Not surprisingly, Shiite-dominated Iran filled the vacuum created by the U.S. departure and ISIS fighters poured in from Syria.

When ISIS began its siege on Ramadi in April, slaughtering innocents and creating tens of thousands of refugees, I thought of Ismail and worried for his safety. Soon after that, he reached out to me. The good news: He was alive. The bad news: everything else.

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