For the Want of a SOFA, a War was Lost...

Remember this oft-repeated phrase from the story of Richard III's defeat at the Battle of Bosworth Field?

"For the want of a nail, a shoe was lost.  For the want of a shoe, a horse was lost.  For the want of a horse, a rider was lost.  For the want of a rider, the war was lost."

Oh, you don't?  So, you're the one...

Anyway, it provides us with an amazingly accurate and timely stage upon which to mount our next posting:

"...We're leaving behind a sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq."

   -  Barack Hussein Obama, December 14, 2011

Our POTUS famously chose to precipitously withdraw all of our combat troops from Iraq without negotiating a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) with the Iraqi leadership.  Now, not to sound like a history teacher, but every President we've ever had, ever had, negotiated such an agreement when preparing to depart a country over which our military had succeeded in winning a victory.  Such was the case in Iraq.

You may recall that our Mr. Obama campaigned back in 2007 on how Iraq was the "bad war."  Afghanistan, he said, on the other hand, was the "good war."  So he promised his loyal followers that he'd withdraw all our forces from that "bad war" place if they'd just elect him President.  And so they did. And so he did.  Without, I might add, forcing the leadership we'd installed in Iraq to sign a piece of paper permitting us to leave behind a "tripwire" force.  He didn't want it.  So he didn't require it.  He didn't ask for it.  And we didn't get it.  

Tripwire?  That's military-speak for just enough troops to protect our victory, while insuring that we'd be required to return in full force should the defeated enemy choose to later rise back up and contest our win.  Take a look at South Korea if you'd like an example. We have nearly 30,000 soldiers stationed just south of the Demilitarized Zone. Should Kim Jung the Un decide to unleash his 2 million-man army and march them south, he'd have to run over our troops to do so.  And America would respond by blowing his ass, as Dirty Harry would say, "clean off."

That's exactly what we did in Germany and Italy and Japan following the end of World War Two.  We spent biblical levels of blood and treasure securing a win, and we left behind armed forces to protect that victory.  And they're still there, more than 70 years later.  That's what you do when you have a brain in your head.  Unlike the leadership the Lefties among us have unfortunately installed in Foggy Bottom.

Our military leadership, the generals and admirals, wanted us to leave behind somewhere between 16,000 and 18,000 battle-hardened troops.  But, they said, we needed not less than 10,700.  Minimum!  Barry the First said, ummm, NO! He just couldn't afford, he said, to spend the money necessary to plant that many of our troops that far away. Too expensive, don't you know.  And we all know just how sensitive he is to excessive expenditures (sorry for the sarcasm).

Doubt me?  Okay, kiddies, here's the Bottom Line.  America has more than 160,000 American military troops stationed outside the Continental United States.  Plus, we have a bit north of 70,000 additional soldiers and sailors and Marines in various "contingency" operations.  Now, don't ask me what, exactly, is a "contingency" operation.  Although at one time our little soiree in Afghanistan, before it was a sort-of declared non-war, was called a "contingency operation."  So, maybe it's a bunch of James Bond scenarios and Seal Teams and Ranger battalions and paratroopers and such, engaging in military ops that aren't called military ops.  Who knows? However, there's 70,000 of our best and brightest doing some of that.  

So, one could applaud Barry for not wanting to spend the money necessary to leave 10,000 in Iraq.  Exxceeeeppppppt, there's more than a quarter million doing something somewhere around the globe on our military payroll.  Want a list?  Okay, here's the list:

-  Germany:             48,000
-  Japan:                  51,000
-  S. Korea:              29,000
-  Kuwait:                 15,000
-  Italy:                     11,000
-  U. Kingdom:         10,000
-  Bahrain:                  2,800
-  Turkey:                 15,000
-  Belgium:                 1,200
-  Cuba:                     1,000
-  Qatar:                        800
-  Spain:                     1,800 

And my personal favorite...

-  Kyrgyzstan:              3,700

There's plenty more, but this is just a list of the biggest of the bunch.  And to be perfectly transparent, these data are from 2012, the latest that the Department of Defense has made available.  They're not too current, are they?

In summation, we have more than 1,000 military bases in 63 countries around the globe.  If Barry really, really wanted to lower our overseas troop count by 10,000, can someone somewhere tell me with a straight face that we couldn't have pulled that many soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen out of South Korea, Germany or Italy? How about 3,500 from each. They wouldn't even be missed...

But no, my friends, he had to squander our victory in Iraq - and it WAS a victory, by pulling out all our combat troops, leaving a vacuum in that fragile country that the Bad Guys have now occupied.  We've been told our whole lives that nature abhors a vacuum.  And now we have indelible proof of that scientific theorem.  We lost thousands of our fellow Americans winning this war, whether you bought into it or not. And the bozo in the White House tossed it away like so much leftover pizza.

Think of it this way:  We suffered the loss of more than 400 of our bravest soldiers and Marines in the capture of Ramadi. Many thousands more were wounded.  But we won. We captured that key city in our war to defeat Islamic radical terrorism.  And now, five years later, after our Golfer-in-Chief abandoned it to the Bad Guys, they just retook Ramadi.  All our losses were in vain.  And I, along with most of my fellow ex-soldiers, blame him.   

There was no ISIS under George W. Bush.  There was no ISIL under Bush.  There was no Boko Haram under "W." There was no Al Shabaab under Bush 43.  There was no mass slaughtering of Christians.  There were no terrorists invading, beheading and burning alive our friends and neighbors in this region under Mr. George Bush.   

BUT THERE IS NOW! 

So, if you're among those of the Lefty persuasion, I apologize for ruining your day with some of those inconvenient "facts."  Perhaps some accurate information such as this might prove to be just the push you need to leave the Liberal camp and go toward the light...