WHEN YOU CREATE A POWER VACUUM, THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS – AT 8:58 A.M. ET:  The Iraqi ambassador to the United States speaks with a rare degree of bluntness.  From The Hill:   

The Iraqi ambassador to the U.S. said Monday that if the U.S. does not provide military assistance to Iraq, the vacuum would be filled by “others.”

Ambassador Lukman Faily said Iran has offered “all the help literally to replace America,” but so far Iraq has refused.

“Our military, our army and everything else has been in partnered with United States. Why would we need to go to the Iranian?” Faily told an audience at the Atlantic Council in Washington.

“But as I said in my speech, a vacuum is being created. And it will be filled by whoever’s available on the ground. That is the reality of it.”

Faily said officials in Baghdad were beginning to doubt U.S. sincerity in wanting to help Iraq beat back the Sunni extremist group Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, which has taken over large parts of northern and western Iraq.

Faily said the U.S. is using the prospect of air strikes and essential military assistance as an incentive for political reform, but without a show of meaningful U.S. support, the Iraqi government has little incentive to undertake the political reforms the U.S. wants, in a “chicken-and-egg” scenario.

“We have skeptics who argue that this is really a conscious U.S. strategy for doing very little, that Washington intention is to create preconditions that we probably cannot satisfied, and then move the goalpost, if necessary, to ensure that we do not satisfy them,” Faily said.

COMMENT:  At least it's straight talk.  We made the same mistake as we wound down our commitment to South Vietnam in 1975.  We essentially abandoned the people who'd worked with us.  Congress even turned down material aid that would have permitted the South Vietnamese to fight without our direct participation.  President Ford correctly called that an act of extreme dishonor. 

Iraq is difficult, and aid to Iraq is unpopular.  They don't necessarily love us.  But Americans spilled blood to keep Iraq out of the orbit of our enemies, and to give it a chance to become a democracy, and now Obama's indifference and short-term political thinking are throwing all the sacrifice away.

Iran will probably succeed in taking over.

July 22, 2014