President Obama Can't Fix the Disaster That Is Iraq

Shi'ite fighters fire a rocket toward Islamic State militants in Baiji, north of Baghdad. (REUTERS/Thaier Al-Sudani)

James Poulos, The Week: Iraq is still an absolute disaster. And the Obama administration can't fix it.

How bad is it in Iraq today? Here's one way to answer the question: The government in Baghdad just allowed Russia to start bombing targets on Iraq's home soil.

The territory in question, of course, now belongs to the Islamic State. And the decision, reports by the International Business Times, "comes just days after a U.S. diplomatic envoy sought assurances from the Baghdad government that it would not allow Russian jets to conduct operations inside Iraq."

That makes this a big embarrassment for America. And it's hardly the only one.

Consider the painful spectacle of the most recent U.S. special forces raid against ISIS — the first to result in a death among our troops since the White House returned us to the Iraq war it once so proudly ended. The raid was called in at the request of our only competent allies in Iraq, the Kurds. As The New York Times recounted, ISIS had imprisoned a host of Iraqi soldiers, readying a massacre, with "a number of peshmerga fighters, as the Kurdish forces are known," among the soon-to-be-victims. Despite their tenacity, the Kurds doubted they could save their men alone. In came U.S. special forces.

WNU Editor: Trillions of dollars spent. Thousands of U.S. soldiers killed or wounded over the past 12 years. And wars now the normal state of affairs in most of the Middle East. I can say with a certain amount of confidence that there is no will in Washington to engage on a massive level in another military campaign in the Middle East.