Trump's Case for Taking the Oil and Obama's State-Building Failure in Iraq

Mar 13, 2017 | Carlo Jose Vicente Caro
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A few weeks ago General Jim Mattis was in Baghdad to analyze the security and political situation there. While there, he told reporters, "We're not in Iraq to seize anybody's oil." This contradicted the president's claim that if we had taken the oil then ISIS would not exist. Soon after this we have not heard the president make that claim again, even though he has had the opportunity to do so.

In 2014 former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta blamed Barack Obama for not pushing Nouri al Maliki enough in order to leave a residual force in Iraq. Whether leaving a force not based on a light footprint would have prevented ISIS is left to debate, considering that terrorism in Iraq grew by more than 600% post-invasion.