Scowcroft Center Chairman Gen. James L. Jones, Jr., USMC (Ret.) writes for the Wall Street Journal on a strategy for Iraq:
The disaster in Iraq has deepened and crystallized over the past 10 days. Terrorist forces of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, or ISIS, seized the Mosul Dam, the country’s largest and most important source of hydroelectric power, and overran several more cities in northern Iraq, including Sinjar. ISIS pushed back the Kurdish Peshmerga forces, exposing the gravity of one more corrupt decision by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki —his egregious failure to arm the Kurds so they could at least defend themselves.
We now see how unwise the U.S. policy was to trust Mr. Maliki, who resigned Thursday after eight years of misrule. But that should have come as no surprise. Middle East leaders warned us that Mr. Maliki’s rank sectarianism and close ties to Tehran could divide Iraq and draw the country into a catastrophe.