Who do you think is responsible for our failure in Iraq?

The Iraqi government.

I do not believe that WE failed in Iraq. Once Maliki decided not to renew the Status of Forces Agreement, our President was right in pulling us out.

That aside, we never lost a battle, we (the Military) left the country in good shape, and the Iraqi government blew it. I have used this analogy before but it was Vietnam Deja Vu. Not our fault.

If some would have stayed, I am positive that the Iraqis would be in better shape now than when we left. But without that Status of Forces Agreement, a Soldier could be tried in the Iraqi Courts for ANYTHING that they didn't like.

And, for an additional 2 cents, we left the wrong country.

It was a political promise made by the President to pull the troops out, but I am in no way blaming the President. The Iraqis have a cultural of laziness and when their military is faced with a challenge, they don't run to it to destroy it, they drop their weapons and run. They are cowards and our military trained them to be Soldiers, and I am not sure if they even deserve to be called Soldiers. We can train them, but we can't teach courage and bravery. The Iraqis had the training and equipment to be an effective military but they seem to lack the will and the courage to live.

A few things here. If we're doing a FLIPL on this thing, the proximate cause is the decision to invade in the first place. However, since it's not, I'll jump on the decision to disband the systems under the seat of power. Purging Batthists was probably a bad way to go. But...and this is a big but...the Iraqi Government and culture share a huge portion of the blame. Let's say America get's it's ass handed to it by...I don't know, let's say Kazakstan. It's just a "for instance," bear with me. We have 10 years to build a capable military. The American mindset, even after defeat, would have been able to build a force (with the guidance and a SHITE-TON of cash from Kazakstan) capable of withstanding an attempted take-over by the Grays Harbor County Patriot Militia (I chose a home state militia so no one would get their knickers in a twist). Corruption on the grand scale that exists in the governments in the middle east do not exist in our (general, publicly held) collective mind as a society. Given the vast amount of money and support and guidance and weapons provided to Iraq, they should have been able to stop ISL in Mosul.

Jay Garner had a plan, which he was just starting to implement. When Paul Bremer came in and Garner was out Bremer implemented the debathazation of the Iraqi Government and military and that was the beginning of the chaos. The biggest of many mistakes we made in Iraq, if you even agree we should have been there to begin with, especially in light of what we were doing in Afghanistan at the time. We planned for the invasion, but not for the aftermath. Bremer didn't come up with that brilliant decision by himself, those above him would have never given him that authority. So who's call was it? Was worth it to dispose Saddam? If he was still in power Al-Qaeda would be minimal and ISIS would not be in Iraq. Invading Iraq also prolonged the war in Afghanistan. The Bush administration pick to run the Iraqi Government , Ahmed Chalabi turned out to be a joke and provided a lot of the misinformation we used to invade Iraq to begin with, but al-Maliki has not turned out much better and is to blame for the current political climate in Iraq. His persecution of the Kurds and Sunnis has led to the current situation. There are no Thomas Jeffersons in Iraq. It took the United States 89 years to have another war to figure out democracy and we are as dysfunctional today as we have ever been. There is a reason that George Washington opposed the development of political parties . . . and we expect countries in the middle east to figure it out in a little over 10 years?

We pulled out too early just like we always do. We start something and the American people get tired of it so they demand that we "send all the troops home"! I guess Vietnam didn't teach us anything huh?

I don't know what more we could have done other than jamming Old Glory in the ground and calling it a new State of the Union. We spent years and billions and gallons of blood making the best possible scenario for a government to be on it's feet and running in full offense mode towards the end zone, the ball was dropped, in my opinion, after we left the field.

It was a mistake to go to Iraq in the first place, after multiple deployments to that cesspool of a country, I can tell you it was never going to be what we thought it should be, they didn't, and still don't, want what we were offering.

I truly hate to think that it was all a waste of lives and money, but the point is it was. I think Pres Obama made the right decision to leave, it's what America wanted, and he delivered, and anybody who was there and actually paying attention knew it was a lost cause, and would fall apart once we left, whenever that might have been.

The biggest mistake was made after WWII when the Allies forced people who didn't want to be a country to become a country namely, Iraq, and we forced Israel on the Middle East without regard for the impact that would have, we just wanted to insure that the Jewish people felt better after Holocaust. Point being it wasn't our business then, it wasn't our business 10 years ago, and it's not our business now. I say let them sort it out themselves, and protect the homeland, and if they come at us again, then we do exactly what we intended to do after 9-11, we figure out who did it, track them down, and wipe them out, as an example, and then we go back home, and stop wasting American money and lives on people who don't even like us, not even a little bit.

Blaming Bremer and his cronies will undoubtedly be a popular choice for disbanding the military they way they did. However, I blame the Iraqi government for the current situation.

Iraqis are to blame, with a little help from rushing us out to win political points and be able to boast "I ended the war in iraq". That was advised against...it, like most things, fell on deaf ears.

In general - blame which ever side - WE still haven't learned a lesson about those people. The folks over there, Iraq and Afghanistan, do not give a damn. They are lazy, they are worthless, they are filth. They do not fight for anything, they sit back and say "help me mista", holding their hands out for food, and everything else that can be provided FOR them.

It was foolish to think that animals could be trained to give a damn, become organized and fend for themselves. If that was an inaccurate statement - why are have they fallen apart again?

Like 1LT John Martin said, " ...a lazy Iraqi Army and Intelligence structure that didn't do systematic checks...Leadership at all levels should have been...recruited informants and sore losers from insurgent groups..."

Once the US left and quit watching, quit DOING for them - they also quit. This time when we go in there, the military should do what it's for: kill them. Kill every goat loving one of them that is identified as hostile, then turn around and leave. No more hand holding, no more years rebuilding and playing teacher. Find, fix, and destroy - come home.