We prematurely left Iraq at the end of 2011. While we left Iraq with its Baathist, al Qaeda, and Sadrist enemies mostly defeated, I wanted us to stay to help Iraq complete those victories.
And more importantly, as I called for years before we completed the battlefield victories by 2008, to support rule of law and cultivate the habits of real democracy by shielding Iraq's political institutions from Iranian pressure and from internal divisions.
We are attempting to make up for our absence by training Iraqis in Jordan:
The United States recently sent a small number of special forces soldiers to Jordan to train with counterparts from Iraq and Jordan, a new step in the Obama administration's effort to help Baghdad stamp out a resurgent al Qaeda threat, a U.S. defense official said on Friday.
And we are accelerating some weapons shipments.
So we can do some limited things on military security matters even if we lack a significant presence in Iraq.
But we can't defend rule of law from so far away given the intense pressure that Iran and the war in Syria are putting on Iraq's fragile democracy:
About two dozen Iraqi women demonstrated on Saturday in Baghdad against a draft law approved by the Iraqi cabinet that would permit the marriage of nine-year-old girls and automatically give child custody to fathers.
The group's protest was on International Women's Day and a week after the cabinet voted for the legislation, based on Shi'ite Islamic jurisprudence, allowing clergy to preside over marriages, divorces and inheritances. The draft now goes to parliament.
On the bright side, the bill could die in committee. It at least isn't on fast-track status since Iraq is gearing up for April 30th elections.
