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

The problem I believe is the region that Iraq is situated in. I can kind of see the middle east as a country and all the states are the countries in the area, united by their religion. From what I've seen isis isn't just in one place. They're moving throughout the region, overthrowing those that don't follow their ways and picking up believers as they go. The thing is that the whole region is unstable. The Muslim culture actually has many different views and some groups are starting to give voice and action to their beliefs as with isis and groups in other countries like Yemen and Egypt for example. To keep Iraq stable in such an active area I believe, unfortunately, that we or another UN country would have to set up long term residence their with two goals. One would be to protect Iraq from groups that wish to do the country harm. So a military presence would be needed. Two would be to see that they have education in all the things the western world is educated in. This second one may seem like forcing our beliefs on them but what I was thinking of more was in mechanics and chemistry for industrial applications. I was MOBed to Afghanistan not Iraq but from what I saw, the people seemed like high school kids as far as work. They liked to cut corners not realizing the detrimental effects it would have on either the equipment or their projects. So I think if we fix their industrial sector it may lead to a better economy and they may be able to sustain the themselves with that. Anyway that's just my opinion.

Folks in my humble opinion the major failure with our attempts to help Iraq, Afghanistan ect.. In that region is they do not want peace!! They have been fighting and killing each other for centuries. They will not take accountability for themselves and do the hard things required to maintain. We can take out a tyrant to liberate their masses but as long as the masses keep the sheeple mentality then the situation will always revert back to what has been their way of life for an eternity! Because there is always an out her bad guy and his crew that want to control the sheeple and will do the hard things to take them over so until they truly want a better way we are wasting our money, time and our great Soldiers lives.

I fought in a war so people can be free to be as they want. For me this includes people that are different than me and or do thing i do not like. This is free, this helps me here, I fought for other to do thing some people despise, including me. Then I can except it's okay for them to be as they are or did, doing, or will. I'd tarnish the polished free i won for them by my misguided bad. Sometime if I was guided to understand..... wisdom will ring clear. I need
....."I FOUGHT FOR THEM TO BE LIKE THAT"

I don't think the U.S. failed in our military mission. I do feel mistakes were made and things would have been better off if prior planning was better.

I went into Iraq in a soft side Hummer and remember civilians happy to see us. I also saw things change. I feel one of the biggest fails was when "East meets West". We had no pre-knowledge of customs of the area. I feel if we'd gotten a little more info on their culture and such many mistakes wouldn't have happened. I also feel Bremer's cutting out all the Iraqi military was a mistake. There were many Iraqi military leaders just waiting at the doors to help, but were over looked. Same with the police and local leaders. We didn't expect everything to collapse like it did. We expected it to be like Germany, with local leaders, police and such to be around so as to help out, but everything disappeared and we were left hanging. It was a struggle. When we took over much of the infrastructure was almost at a collapse, electrical, water and such were working, but the systems were so run down, plus the bombing didn't help much. There wasn't much of a Phase IV plan for the "Occupation" phase of the operation. Again the biggest thing that caught us off guard was the total collapse of "help". Ammo dumps were left completely unguarded and open, free for the pickins and believe you me, they got picked!

Now Iraq turned into the play ground for every extremists in the world. Free arms, explosives and such was the calling card. The virtually non-existing borders made access easy. Also the fact we pissed a lot of the locals off because we didn't know their customs didn't do any good. The Iraqis are a very "revenge" seeing society. They must save face and this mentality drove a lot of Iraqi to start to take actions against us and then the extremists coming into the country found pickings great and very easy to recruit these people.

Religion also played a big factor into what happened. The two factions Shi'a and Sunni didn't help. Because of the strong thumb SH held over the people this was repressed, after he was gone, and the local leaders were gone, then the poop hit the fan, of course outside help didn't make the situation better.

There's a lot to this and I've just skimmed the surface. The bottom rock is, Iraqi people have got to work together to get the country they want. The worst part is Iraq is still too "Tribal". Many are loyal to their local leaders and not to the country. Until they can overcome many of the differences and start to work together as one nation, it will never happen. Not our fault.

The Failure in Iraq is squarely on the shoulders of the senior leadership(military), it seemed that most were worried about their next promotion more then the outcome of the conflict, the rules of engagement should have never put us at a disadvantage, it happened in Iraq Afganistan and Vietnam, thats what happened, and that was the fault of the senior leadership, it dragged on to long which gave the civilians time to start feeling sorry for the terrorists, we could have ended everything a lot sooner, in all the conflicts.

Well it starts at the top President Obama has not done enough to fight them, his unwillingness to do anything has made a mess of the military, he does not even like the military with what he's doing. But we should have gone in and trained or fought along side those fighters already. He says he doesn't want another war, but the minute he started bombing them we are in one. Everyone knows that air power can not win wars or even slow them down to much with out ground forces.

the benObama administration failure to push for the status of forces agreement and the announcement of a withdraw date was the turning point. In Nam we won all the battles and lost the war politically and it is the same in Iraq. Or you could go back to Gulf War 1 when we stopped because of our self imposed goal for pushing the Iraqi's out. So blame administrations back to Bush 41. Not completing the mission. That being the destruction of an enemy's ability to wage war. Or blame us, we the people, because we do not have the stomach to finish what we start. People die in war and we as a people, in my opinion, could not take the news of casualties in the 100's or more. In the civil war Shilo 15K plus, and more in later battles. 1. Political will 2. goal of complete destruction of an enemy, 3. Many casualties, and 4. we as a collective by not demanding victory. ANd it is happening again in Afganistan, and the over all war on terror.

Barack HUSSEIN Obama and Nouri Al-Maliki

That's a really easy answer. Our military has never lost a fight a politician started. Politicians have lost fights military finished. WWI is a good example. Had the politicians of the day not gone so hard core on Germany wanting to punish them for everything in all likelyhood WWII would not have happened. The best current example...ISIS, Iraq which was won under Bush in '07 when I was there. It was lost after that by ignoring an emerging threat. Only a fol gives away what he has earned. We earned a victory there with our Iraqi partners, and had to watch while it was given away. That is not how you keep the peace after a war. People were screaming a out when we were leaving Iraq and Afghanistan. I woukd pose them ine question. When did we leave Japan, Germany, or Korea after the war? Why would Iraq or Afghanistan have to be any different?

Not removing Hussain during Desert Storm? UN failure to keep tabs on WMDs entering the country?