If You Thought Bush's Invasion Of Iraq Benefited Iran, Wait Till Obama Withdraws US Troops

Remember when one of the criticisms of the US invasion of Iraq was that it removed Iraq as a check against Iran and gave the Iranians a freer hand to pursue their agenda in the Middle East?

If the invasion of Iraq benefited Iran, is there any reason to believe that withdrawing US troops from Iraq would not also have benefit a country in the reason?

Michael Rubin writes that the US withdrawal from Iraq will allow Bashar al-Assad to stay in control in Syria.
After all:

Assad knows he only has to wait another six weeks and then he’s home free. When the last American troops depart from Iraq, there will be little impediment to Iranian resupply of their beleaguered ally.

Alas, Obama’s triumph–the abandonment of Iraq, a country whose partnership he seems to dismiss because of latent Bush Derangement Syndrome–is already having a far greater effect than the White House or State Department are willing to admit. [emphasis added]

If this is true and Syria in fact is able to crush the protesters once and for all with Iran's help, Syria may well stop the fall of dominoes and put a major damper on the Arab Spring.

Not only would the failure of the protests in Syria hurt the morale of protesters in the Middle East, it would conversely serve as an encouragement to Middle East dictators that the West has worn itself out and that it is now possible to crush opposition with impunity.

And none of that could have been done with Obama.

Technorati Tag: Obama and Syria.