Obama is helpless to influence situation in Iraq because he withdrew all American troops. Doh!

Last month I wrote about the disaster that is President Obama's foreign policy in Iraq:

[A]fter so much American blood and treasure was spent on overthrowing Saddam Hussein and Iraq seemed to be emerging from its decades-long nightmare under Saddam, now it is instead threatening to become yet another failed nation under Iranian control and a potential training ground for extremists. Civil war between Shiites and Sunnis is breaking out and America is powerless to do anything about it. Iraq is falling into the same abyss that Syria has fallen into. All this, because Obama's disastrous "leading from behind," "hitting singles and doubles," toothless "redlines," foreign policy has withdrawn the American forces that would have given him the ability to influence the situation. ... It is possible to argue about the wisdom of George Bush's initial decision to invade Iraq. But, once that investment had been made (we are talking about 4500 American lives, after all, and Mr Obama is very fond of talking about investments), to withdraw all troops at the very moment when the investment was beginning to pay dividends is the action of an idiot.

Now, WSJ reports a Sunni insurgency is threatening to topple the Shiite, Iranian puppet government in Baghdad:

At a closed-door gathering of Gulf states in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, in May, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and his Arab counterparts all signaled agreement on one thing for the first time: Islamist forces seizing territory in Syria and Iraq had become a regionwide menace that can't be ignored. What they didn't agree on was what to do about it, U.S. officials said. ... The Obama administration, unable to operate openly in Iraq since the U.S. withdrawal and unwilling to intervene in Syria for fear of getting pulled into another conflict, has left itself few options to directly confront the growing threat, according to senior U.S. defense and intelligence officials.

A Sunni insurgency would not be rolling towards Baghdad if US troops were still on the ground in Iraq. As things stand now, however, the US is helpless to influence the situation because Obama withdrew all American forces from the region. Doh!

So, Iraq is going the way of Syria, and an enormous swath of the Middle East is descending into the kind of chaos that has proven such a fertile breeding ground of terrorists in the past. Rarely have we witnessed such utter incompetence and ineptitude in foreign policy.