Treacherous as a friend

Americans don't like to think about it very much, but we have been an imperial power for well over a century. It's difficult to get an accurate measurement of how many military bases the United States has overseas, or even the number of countries where the U.S. has a military presence. One site shows 25, another says 150. Either way, you're talking about the reach and behavior of an empire, even if it we are diffident about acknowledging the existence of the empire itself.

One place where we don't have a military presence is Iraq, which coincidentally is going to hell right now. We were there for quite a while; I'm sure you read all about it, because it was in the papers. We left, though, and what we left behind is problematic -- lots and lots of weaponry that the feckless Iraqi army is abandoning in the field. What seems to be happening is that the Iraqi soldiers are taking off their uniforms and trying to blend in with the general population, even as the ISIS forces sweep through and capture places like Mosul and Tikrit. It's difficult to know if this is a surrender or a strategic move that will usher in a guerrilla-style civil war. Either way, it's not a happy turn of events.

The president was quite pleased that he had ended the war in Iraq, but he didn't end the war. Wars don't end until one side is defeated and while we aren't fighting in Iraq at the moment, the repercussions of what is happening there are going to be a problem for him, and for us, for a long time now. John Hinderaker at Powerline created this graphic that sums things up quite well:

Your results may vary

The great scholar Bernard Lewis made the following observation about the United States way back in aftermath of our first Iraq foray, 1991 -- America is harmless as an enemy and treacherous as a friend. No country understands that better than Iraq, where we've come and left twice in the past 23 years. It's quite possible that we'll be back again, although I can't imagine why anyone in Iraq would want us back.