{"id":34062,"date":"2021-05-08T21:34:17","date_gmt":"2021-05-09T01:34:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/?p=34062"},"modified":"2021-05-20T23:54:38","modified_gmt":"2021-05-21T03:54:38","slug":"barack-obama-visits-iraq","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/barack-obama-visits-iraq\/","title":{"rendered":"Barack Obama Visits Iraq & Sees a Need for Change"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Did Barack Obama visit Iraq? What was the purpose of the visit? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Barack Obama opposed the war in Iraq. When he and others in Congress visited the country, he became even more convinced of his views. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read more about Barack Obama’s visit to Iraq and how it motivated him. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Barack Obama Visits Iraq<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

That same year, Obama visited Iraq to see U.S. troops as part of a congressional delegation. Although he had been an early and consistent opponent of the war, he now saw firsthand the true costs of George W. Bush\u2019s military adventurism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The vicious sectarian violence on the ground had been exacerbated by a series of disastrous missteps and miscalculations by the Bush administration, chief among which was the move to disband the Iraqi Army after the fall of Saddam Hussein. This greatly destabilized the country and contributed to the deteriorating security situation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

U.S. soldiers were embroiled in a hopeless cycle of violence marked by suicide bombings and guerilla warfare tactics. <\/strong>Obama didn\u2019t blame the soldiers\u2014he blamed the incompetence and arrogance of Republican political leaders like Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who had sold the war to the American people on the basis of a series of lies about Iraq\u2019s stockpile of WMDs and its supposed responsibility for 9\/11 (neither of which was true). They\u2019d then invaded the country with no real plan to rebuild, simply assuming that the overwhelming American military might would paper over their planning failures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Disturbingly, even many of his prominent Senate Democratic colleagues had voted to authorize the war, including Hillary Clinton and John Kerry. To Obama, the behavior of these Democrats showed the downside of playing the Washington political game\u2014the need to posture and appear \u201ctough,\u201d the pompous decorum and easy collegiality that, if you weren\u2019t careful, could sap you of all your principles. Barack Obama’s visit to Iraq proved to be very informative. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Washington was more broken than Obama had thought. Things needed to change\u2014and quickly. And he recognized that <\/strong>he <\/em><\/strong>might need to play a vital role in bringing about that change. <\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Did Barack Obama visit Iraq? What was the purpose of the visit? Barack Obama opposed the war in Iraq. When he and others in Congress visited the country, he became even more convinced of his views. Read more about Barack Obama’s visit to Iraq and how it motivated him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":34069,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,33,275],"tags":[274],"class_list":["post-34062","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-history","category-people","category-politics","tag-a-promised-land","","tg-column-two"],"yoast_head":"\nBarack Obama Visits Iraq & Sees a Need for Change - Shortform Books<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"As a U.S. Senator, Barack Obama visited Iraq. 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