Fast forward through five years of the Administration's indifference, and Iraq is close to exceeding the kind of chaos that engulfed it before the U.S. surge. The city of Fallujah, taken from insurgents by the Marines at a cost of 95 dead and nearly 600 wounded in November 2004, fell again to al Qaeda in January. The Iraqi government has not been able to reclaim the entire city—just 40 miles from Baghdad. More than 1,000 Iraqi civilians were killed in May alone, according to the Iraq Body Count web site.
The collapse of the Iraqi army in Mosul and its inability to retake Fallujah reflect poorly on the competence of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, whose Shiite "State of Law" coalition won a plurality of seats in parliamentary elections in April and will likely win a third term later this year.
Mr. Maliki has an autocratic streak and has done little to reassure Iraq's Sunnis, which makes it easy for the Obama Administration to blame him for Iraq's troubles. His dalliance with the regime in Tehran—including a reported $195 million arms deal in February—doesn't add to his stature.
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A member of Kurdish security forces stands guard as families flee Mosul in Iraq on Tuesday. Reuters
Yet groups such as ISIS are beyond the reach of political palliation. It is an illusion that a more pro-Sunni coloration to any democratically elected Iraqi government would have made much of a difference to the debacle in Mosul. Mr. Maliki may also be forgiven for being unable to control the terrorist spillover from the chaos in neighboring Syria, where ISIS first took hold. Whatever its failures, the Iraqi government doesn't have the luxury of pivoting away from its own neighborhood.
That can't be said for the Obama Administration. Its promise of a "diplomatic surge" in Iraq to follow the military surge of the preceding years never materialized as the U.S. washed its hands of the country. Mr. Obama's offer of a couple thousand troops beyond 2011 was so low that Mr. Maliki didn't think it was worth the domestic criticism it would engender. An American President more mindful of U.S. interests would have made Mr. Maliki an offer he couldn't refuse.
Mr. Maliki had to plead for emergency military equipment when he visited the U.S. last year, and the U.S. has mostly slow-rolled the delivery of arms. Now that stocks of U.S. military supplies have fallen into ISIS's hands in Mosul, the Administration's instinct will be to adopt an ultra-cautious approach to further arms deliveries. Mr. Maliki is likely to depend even more on Iran for aid, increasing the spread of the Sunni-Shiite regional conflict.
The Administration's policy of strategic neglect toward Iraq has created a situation where al Qaeda effectively controls territories stretching for hundreds of miles through Anbar Province and into Syria. It will likely become worse for Iraq as the Assad regime consolidates its gains in Syria and gives ISIS an incentive to seek its gains further east. It will also have consequences for the territorial integrity of Iraq, as the Kurds consider independence for their already autonomous and relatively prosperous region.
All this should serve as a warning to what we can expect in Afghanistan as the Administration replays its Iraq strategy of full withdrawal after 2016. It should also serve as a reminder of the magnitude of the strategic blunder of leaving no U.S. forces in Iraq after the country finally had a chance to serve as a new anchor of stability and U.S. influence in the region. An Iraqi army properly aided by U.S. air power would not have collapsed as it did in Mosul.
In withdrawing from Iraq in toto, Mr. Obama put his desire to have a talking point for his re-election campaign above America's strategic interests. Now we and the world are facing this reality: A civil war in Iraq and the birth of a terrorist haven that has the confidence, and is fast acquiring the means, to raise a banner for a new generation of jihadists, both in Iraq and beyond.
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5) Tea Party Claims Huge Scalp as Cantor Crashes in Primary
By Cathy Burke

In the most stunning upset of the midterm election season, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor was crushed in the Virginia Republican primary Tuesday by little-known tea party-backed challenger Dave Brat.
With 90.2 percent of the vote counted, Brat had 55.4 percent to Cantor's 44.6 percent.

"I know there's a lot of long faces here tonight," Cantor told shocked supporters in a Richmond hotel ballroom, The Washington Post reported. "It's disappointing, sure. But I believe in this country. I believe there's opportunity around the next corner for all of us."

Cantor spoke for just four minutes, promising to continue to "fight for the conservative cause."

Brat, an economics professor who's never run for public office, has been a relentless critic of the better-financed and far-better-known Cantor — who had been considered a potential future House speaker — for spending too much time in Washington and losing touch with his conservative base at home.

"The job title is representative. It's hard to represent people when you haven't met them," complained Brat, who teaches at Randolph-Macon College, a small liberal arts school north of Richmond.

This November Brat will face Democratic nominee Jack Trammell, a professor at the same college. 

"I'm as stunned as anybody," said Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia. "I've yet to find one person nationally or in the state outside the Brat circle who thought Cantor would be beaten.

"This is one of the most stunning upsets in modern American political history," Sabato said. "This is the base rebelling against the GOP leadership in Washington, as represented by Eric Cantor.

"Everybody agrees that if immigration reform was on life support before, they're pulling out the plugs" because no other House Republican will want to end up like Cantor, Sabato said.

Fox News Political Editor Chris Stirewalt said Brat's election means comprehensive immigration reform is "dead meat."

Pollster Doug Schoen told Newsmax that Republican voters are angry. 

"They are angry at the establishment. Eric Cantor represents inside Washington — and this is a repudiation of the Republican leadership strata."

He said it's a warning sign for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who is involved in a tough general-election battle in Kentucky with Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes.

"There's just a sense that they want the establishment out. This is an angry vote. It's a rejection of everything the Republicans stand for," Schoen said.

Cantor, first elected in 2000, won the 2012 Republican primary with 79 percent of the vote. He has been the House majority leader since 2011, and has served in the Republican leadership since 2003.

Most Republicans view Cantor, 51, as the most conservative member of the House leadership, CNN noted, saying he served as President Barack Obama's chief foil in budget negotiations in 2011.

But Brat needled Cantor over his support for immigration reform.

"Congressman Cantor has now publicly declared his intention to pass amnesty as soon as he possibly can, with President Obama's help," Brat told The Daily Caller on the eve of the primary. 

"He is working hand-in-glove with the Chamber of Commerce to boost the supply of low-wage guest workers for corporations and provide other lavish Wall Street bailouts at taxpayers' expense. No lawmaker is more beholden to large corporate funders than Eric Cantor. His corporate donors think they can buy this election."

Brat even was able to pick off some former Cantor backers, PBS reported. 

"[Cantor's] interests have turned toward large corporations, and he's not looking out for my interests," Ron Hedlund, who owns a small industrial repair business in Richmond and was a former volunteer for Cantor, told PBS.

Brat had also picked up support from some local Republican groups as well, ominously topping Cantor by more than 40 points in a straw poll at the district's GOP convention in May, PBS noted.

For his part, Cantor — who collected more than $1 million in April and May for his campaign — stuck to accusations that Brat, who raised a little over $200,000, was a "liberal college professor." 

Virginia is no stranger to fights between the GOP establishment and the tea party since tea party favorite Ken Cuccinelli lost last year's gubernatorial race. This year, Cantor supporters met with resistance trying to wrest control of the state party away from tea party enthusiasts, including in Cantor's Richmond-area home district.

"It does speak to the kind of restlessness of the tea party," University of Richmond political science professor Daniel Palazzolo told the Associated Press.

The Cantor loss could bode ill for one other longtime Republican incumbent, Mississippi Sen. Thad Cochran, who's facing the fight of his life against tea party-backed challenger Chris McDaniel, who slams Cochran as not conservative enough.
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