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

Obama

Everyone that let us go into that region in the first place, allowed us to stay there, or allows us to continue to buy their oil is to blame.

In there under false pretenses with manufactured intelligence to support the reasoning, to overthrow a man that we supported to some degree as far as arming him with weapons to use against Iran. Once Overthrown the new government won't sign a SOFA with us which puts our Armed Forces in a bind. The list is endless for the Failures there. No win situation from the get go like so many. Good Idea to cut our loses and leave and the sooner the better, although I have no problem against using it as a location to bomb the holy wee wee out of ISIS and any other Religious Fundementalist Ding Dongs that happen to be a problem there.

the weAK ASSED PREZZZZZZZZZZ

Honestly there is enough blame to go around from start to finish. In my opinion we had no business being there in 2003, but that is besides the point. We screwed up in Iraq in 2003 because we caused a power vacuum when we removed Saddam and we had no plan to prevent that until it was too late. Where we really messed up is the way in which we up and left the Iraqi people in 2011 was the turning point in which the door was opened for SIS/ISIL and even Al Queda if they had been a factor at that point. I don't blame the ground forces I blame the higher Sr leadership in the White House and in the Pentagon for how it all played out. That is my opinion on this.

Days of Fire by Peter Baker is an outstanding book that eludes to how Iraq was mishandled at crucial points. In a nutshell alot of the problems stem from Donald Rumsfeld, GEN Casy, and GEN Abizaid prior to the surge according to the book. Essentially they wanted to continue with transferring authority over to Iraqi's and put a heavier burden on SOF's, as well as more emphasis on Advisor's. GEN (R) Keane conducted studies with "the Iraq Study Group" and pushed for the surge wich really quelled the sectarian violence and established a pretty stable Iraq throughout my time there in 07-09 during the surge.
However my two cent's on the matter happen to be that we never should have left that country and established enduring bases just like in Korea and Germany. It was obvious in 2009 that they're security forces were literally just there to collect a paycheck, and if they weren't payed on time went and did whatever they could to make money, most of the time being planting IED's etc. They absolutely had no vested interest in securing their country, no sense of pride in country If you were to name any of our Army Values only a handful of the 500+ Soldiers I assisted in training exhibited a single one. To make that Country actually "work" in my opinion, the Government must be fixed, and allow them to establish a real military that is self sustaining with a model similar to ours in terms of entry level military training.

I'm not going to get too technical here or even political but blaming the Iraqi government would be the equivalent of a Communist country invading America, setting up a Communist government, and then it all falls apart because we don't want it.

Sir, with all due respect for Islamic religion, whoever added anything pertinent to annihilation of infidels is to blame. That includes lying, manipulating, and going to the most inhumane methods to commit unspeakable atrocities in the name of Allah

That kind of narrows it down to one man who walked this planet in 600AD. I'll stop right there and let the reader think about it. This is a very politically controversial, but true answer in regards to those who take this religion fundamentally.

And that mentality, Sir, is unfortunately irreversible, prompting only one action to stop it, which I'm sure you know what it is

IMO the problem in Iraq stems from the American people.

In Desert Storm we smashed their infrastructure and then walked away under political pressure.

We then spent 12 years following a policy of bombing the country from afar without committing any "boots on the ground" this gave Hussein ample opportunity to demonize America, and blame us for the economic depression the country was forced to live in (Very similar to the time between WWI and WWII that allowed Hitler to raise to power).

We went to war under the policy of "not to conquer, but to liberate" out of political correctness.

We allowed people who had been brainwashed by a maniacal dictator for almost a quarter of a century to elect a government.

We then "threw the keys" to a weak, fledgling government that had been elected by a country of abused children. Again, politics.

Had we been honest with ourselves, and admitted to ourselves collectively that our only interest in the middle east is it's strategic oil reserves. With that in mind we could have entered the Desert Storm with the realization that we would need to occupy and re-indoctrinate a defeated enemy long term the same way we did with Japan and Germany post WWII.

Instead we followed a policy reminiscent of Vietnamization, and we are seeing (predictably) similar results. Unfortunately we don't have the luxury of walking away from Iraq (because of terrorism and the country's strategic importance) the way we did in Vietnam.

Until we educate ourselves, and elect officials that use common sense as seen through the lens of history. I'm afraid we will continue to fight wars with one hand tied behind our back, and walk away from hills bought with too much blood. It's just an unfortunate weak point of a Democracy... unless "We the People" are willing to think for ourselves, we will continue to elect leaders who are unwilling to make unpopular but right decisions.