US Shocked And Angered By Iraq Conflagration
Updated: 6:14pm UK, Thursday 12 June 2014
By Dominic Waghorn, US Correspondent in Washington
"What we were looking for was an Iraq that was secure, stable and self-reliant, and that's what we got here, so there's no question that was a success."
Those words were spoken by Denis McDonough, then Deputy National Security Adviser, in October 2011 shortly before the completion of America's military withdrawal from Iraq.
He is now the White House chief of staff, and those words are coming back to haunt him with a vengeance.
There is shock and anger across America.
"What in the world is happening in Iraq?" asked the anchor on NBC Nightly News.
A reporter then pointed out that Islamic extremists were achieving what so many thousands of American troops died trying to prevent.
Barack Obama wanted his foreign policy legacy to be ending America's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Instead, as The Washington Post put it, he is "pulling the United States out of wars that were far from over" - a very different proposition.
A Republican administration started the war in Iraq, but this administration ended it too soon, say conservative critics.
In 2011, the Obama administration refused to leave a military force behind in Iraq after the withdrawal. US-Iraqi negotiations failed to reach agreement and that was that.
But America's premature withdrawal from Iraq increasingly looks like it has jeopardised any lasting US achievement there, despite the billions of dollars and thousands of lives spent.
It also now calls into question US plans to pull out of Afghanistan.
The Obama administration's record in Syria is also being blamed for the disaster unfolding in Iraq.
ISIS was on the ropes in Iraq, on the point of collapse, until the Syrian civil war rescued its fortunes.
Moderate Sunni groups opposed to the Assad regime were never armed by the West and were unable to establish supremacy over the opposition.
That gave ISIS the ability to take territory, regroup and prepare for the campaign under way in Iraq.
Thus far the US government's reaction is one of, "crisis, what crisis?" The State Department will not call the situation in Iraq anything more serious than a "deteriorating security situation".
As ISIS reportedly heads for Baghdad, and with half a million people on the move, that looks like a study in diplomatic understatement.
There is no possibility of American boots on the ground. Airstrikes are also considered highly unlikely.
While America is happy to use drones to attack al Qaeda in Yemen, Pakistan and Afghanistan, it is currently not expected to do the same in Iraq.
The Iraqis are on their own, and riding with them is the fate of America's post-war project in Iraq.
Mr Obama is staking his foreign policy legacy on a military that has shown no appetite for putting up a fight.
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