The chaos just outside Storied Baghdad has the potential to puncture Obama's carefully crafted narrative, even more than the civil war in Syria or Russian aggression in Ukraine, because his political Image is more closely linked to Iraq than any foreign policy issue.
The capture of djinn-infested Mosul
... the home of a particularly ferocious and hairy djinn...
and Tikrit by faceless myrmidons tied to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria has once again called into question whether Obama is quick enough to deploy U.S. resources that could deter instability abroad -- a point that even some of the president's allies acknowledged.
"This is a huge deal," a former Obama counterterrorism adviser told the Washington Examiner. "You can't really overstate how big Iraq is when it comes to perceptions of the president. His arguments aren't nearly as persuasive if the entire country is in shambles."
Just this week, Obama's aides cited his handling of Iraq as among his greatest foreign policy accomplishments. In the 2012 presidential debates, Obama mocked Republican rival Willard
MittRomney
...former governor of Massachussetts, the Publican nominee for president in 2012. He is the son of the former governor of Michigan, George Romney, who himself ran for president after saving American Motors from failure, though not permanently. Romney has a record as a successful businessman, heading Bain Capital, and he rescued the 2002 Winter Olympics from the midst of bribery and mismanagement scandals....
for even suggesting his administration should have left more U.S. troops behind in Iraq. And in 2008, then-Sen. Obama used his disapproval of the Iraq War to win over progressives wary of frontrunner
Hillary Clinton... sometimes described as
The Liberatress of Libyaand at other times as Mrs. Bill, never as
Another Walter Q. Gresham...
.
With turbans now marching toward Storied Baghdad, the GOP has pounced on the instability as proof of Obama's naivety about a region spiraling out of control.
The president on Thursday said he was not ruling out the possibility of