Abdication in Iraq has a price

Yes, it is true that there was no al-Qaida in Iraq when George W. Bush took office. But it is equally true that there was essentially no al-Qaida in Iraq remaining when Barack Obama took office.

By 2009, al-Qaida in Iraq had not just been decimated, but humiliated by the U.S. surge and the Anbar Awakening. Here were aggrieved Sunnis, having ferociously fought the Americans who had overthrown 80 years of Sunni hegemony, now reversing allegiance and joining the infidel invader in crushing, indeed extirpating from Iraq, their fellow Sunnis of al-Qaida.

At the same time, Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki turned the Iraqi army against radical Shiite militias from Basra all the way north to Baghdad.

The result? 'A sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq.” That's Obama in December 2011 describing the Iraq we were leaving behind. He called it 'an extraordinary achievement.”

David Petraeus had won the war. Obama's one task was to conclude a status-of-forces agreement to solidify the gains. By Obama's own admission, such agreements are necessary.

Which is what made his failure to do so in Iraq so disastrous. His excuse was his inability to get immunity for U.S. soldiers. Nonsense. Bush had worked out a compromise in his 2008 SOFA, as we have done with allies everywhere. The real problem was Obama's determination to 'end the war.” He had three years to negotiate a deal and didn't even begin talks until a few months before the deadline period.

So Obama ordered a full withdrawal. And with it disappeared U.S. influence in curbing sectarianism, mediating among factions and providing both intelligence and tactical advice to Iraqi forces now operating on their own.

Overnight, Iran and its promotion of Shiite supremacy became the dominant influence in Iraq.

The day after the U.S. departure, Maliki ordered the arrest of the Sunni vice president.

He cut off funding for the Sons of Iraq, the Sunnis who had fought with us against al-Qaida. And subsequently so persecuted and alienated Sunnis that they were ready to welcome back al-Qaida in Iraq - rebranded in its Syrian refuge as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria - as the lesser of two evils. Hence the stunningly swift ISIS capture of Mosul, Tikrit and so much of Sunni Iraq.

But the jihadist revival is the result of a double Obama abdication: creating a vacuum not just in Iraq but in Syria.

Faced with a de facto jihadi state spanning both countries, a surprised Obama now has little choice but to try to re-create overnight, from scratch and in miniature, the kind of U.S. presence - providing intelligence, tactical advice and perhaps even air support - he abjured three years ago.