It was helpful to have the American troops there in great strength. They knew there'd be consequences if they didn't move back. Now, there has been some removal of the foreign forces.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I'm not sure Americans are hesitant to do this again - to fight another war, because it looked to them like a courageous and terrific endeavor.
With respect to Iraq, I did favour the continuity of American forces to work with the new Maliki government. They had enormous needs for intelligence, for training on everything from airplanes to more sophisticated ground equipment and the like.
If there is one lesson for U.S. foreign policy from the past 10 years, it is surely that military intervention can seem simple but is in fact a complex affair with the potential for unintended consequences.
What we achieved under General Petraeus up through 2011, and defeating this threat that we faced out there, I mean, once we decided to come out of there, we squandered an enormous opportunity that, frankly, the military did actually provide our nation and provided the Middle East.
With no other security forces on hand, U.S. military was left to confront, almost alone, an Iraqi insurgency and a crime rate that grew worse throughout the year, waged in part by soldiers of the disbanded army and in part by criminals who were released from prison.
I still think it would be a great mistake to go into a war without support of our friends and allies.
We should have done more damage to the Iraqi forces before they withdrew from the Kuwaiti theater.
Leaving Iraq without military assistance during its transition, and before it is stable enough to ensure its own citizens' security, would pose a tremendous risk. We must complete our mission.
That was one of the great successes of removing Saddam Hussein, as we took Iraq out of the picture of having a sovereign nation from which the terrorists could operate. But this war has not gone perfectly.
There are still plenty of fighting forces inside of Syria who want to see Assad go. We should have been helping them from the very beginning.
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