After spending billions of dollars to prop up Iraq’s government, President Obama blamed its leaders Friday for the chaos engulfing the teetering nation — and said he would decide in a matter of days how to address the crisis.
“We can’t do it for them,” the president said of establishing stability in the war-torn country, where thousands of Iraqi soldiers gave up their posts at the first sign of advancing insurgents. “This should be a wake-up call.”
Obama insisted that any US effort to halt the insurgents must be accompanied by tangible support from Iraqi officials.
“Ultimately, it’s up to Iraqis to solve their problems,” he said.
Obama warned that the spreading violence in Iraq could spill across the region and threaten US interests.
“This poses a danger to Iraq and its people, and, given the nature of these terrorists, it could pose a threat eventually to American interests, as well,” he said at the White House before boarding Marine One for a trip west.
“We will not be sending US troops back into combat in Iraq, but I have asked my national-security team to prepare a range of other options.”
Obama also referred to the feeble effort put forth by Iraqi-government forces in the face of the onslaught from the small but radical rebel force.
Instead of fighting back, some Iraqi soldiers gave up before combat even started — with many stripping down to civilian clothes that they had been wearing under their uniforms in preparation to flee, sources said.
“The fact that they are not willing to stand and fight and defend their posts against admittedly hardened terrorists, but not terrorists who are overwhelming in numbers, indicates that there’s a problem with morale. There’s a problem in terms of commitment,” Obama said.
“Ultimately, that’s rooted in the political problems that have plagued the country for a very long time.”
Officials said four Iraqi army divisions peeled off their uniforms and fled their posts when attacked by militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria — which this week seized large swaths of land in the Muslim nation, including the cities of Mosul and Tikrit.
The insurgent group has no more than 10,000 fighters. The Iraqi government’s army, meanwhile, is 800,000 strong.
Experts theorized that the army’s Sunni soldiers — who are of the same sect as the insurgents — may have simply allowed the land grab to happen. In Tikrit and Mosul, troops made up largely of Sunni and Kurdish soldiers fled without a fight.
The United States spent at least $25 billion training and supplying the Iraqi army and security forces.
The extremist group seizing land, meanwhile, was most likely made up of fewer than 1,000 fighters equipped with small-arms weaponry, the Military Times reported. They faced off against an estimated 30,000 American-trained Iraqi soldiers armed with sophisticated equipment, the paper reported.
While Obama heaped blame on the Iraqi government, beleaguered Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said that the United States had left behind a mess and that America was obligated to prevent the collapse of his regime.
“I am not saying the Americans are responsible for everything, but they did not leave a well-trained army, and they left us without any real air support, and the Obama administration really shares much of the blame,” he said.
Ex-President George W. Bush declined to weigh in on the crisis, with his spokesman telling the Daily Mail: “When he left office, President Bush decided not to criticize his successor.”
But former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, on her “Hard Choices” book tour in Washington, said, “We certainly don’t want to fight their fight . . . there’s no reason on earth that I know of that we would ever sacrifice a single American life for that.”
Meanwhile, the unrest sent oil prices spiking to their highest levels this year, prompting fears of rising gasoline prices if the situation worsens.