With eyes turning to China and the potential for increased great power tensions in Asia, it's important to remember how weak the U.S. will be in such a circumstance if we can't disentangle ourselves from playing referee inside Iraq. To that end, Leila Fadel's report in the Washington Post is worrisome:
'A senior U.S. military official who has spent years in Iraq said he fears that as the drawdown begins, American forces are leaving behind many of the same conditions that preceded the sectarian war."All we're doing is setting the clock back to 2005," said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to offer a stark assessment. "The militias are fully armed, and al-Qaeda in Iraq is trying to move back from the west. These are the conditions now, and we're sitting back looking at PowerPoint slides and whitewashing."
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If violence begins to ramp up, what will the Obama administration do?