Since one of Ajami’s main complaints in this op-ed concerns Obama’s decision to withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq, it is worth revisiting why keeping a U.S. military presence in Iraq would have been a mistake. Marc Lynch reviews the decision:

The real story of America’s withdrawal from Iraq is how little impact it has really had on either Iraq or the region. There are even signs that the withdrawal has helped to nudge Iraqis onto the right path, though not as quickly or directly as I might have hoped. This month’s death toll was the lowest on record since the 2003 invasion, while Iraqi oil exports are at their highest level since 1980. Baghdad successfully hosted an Arab Summit meeting, which may have done little for Syria but did go further to bring Iraq back into the Arab fold than anything since 2003. Maliki’s jousting with his domestic foes and efforts to balance Iraq’s ties with Tehran with improved Arab relations are what needs to happen for Iraq to regain a semblance of normality. It isn’t pretty, and probably won’t be any time soon, but there’s absolutely no reason to believe that it would look any better with American troops still encamped in the country. Thus far, Obama’s risky but smart gamble to end the U.S. military presence in Iraq is paying off.

It is probably right that Iraq will fare better without U.S. forces there than with them, but there’s no question that the U.S. is better off not having a military presence in Iraq. What is also undeniable is that a continued U.S. presence would have involved unnecessary risk for American soldiers. We can easily imagine how U.S. forces still in Iraq in 2012 would have been targeted by Iraqi militias, and a continued U.S. presence in the country would have encouraged terrorist attacks against Iraqi targets. Americans would probably still be dying in Iraq, and for what? For the sake of the dubious goal of limiting Iranian influence that the overthrow of Hussein helped to increase?

Keeping U.S. troops in Iraq would have been unlikely to keep Iraq “in the orbit of U.S. power.” It’s not as if Iraq’s relations with Iran weren’t already significantly improving while U.S. forces were still in the country, and Maliki would have the same incentives not to support predominantly Sunni rebels in neighboring Syria that he has today. It is not lost on him that at least some of the people that the Gulf monarchies want to arm were supporting the insurgency against Maliki’s government just a few years ago. If U.S. forces were still in Iraq today, we would be watching the disgraceful spectacle of U.S. soldiers coming under attack in the hopes that their presence might help Iraq better resist Iranian influence at the very moment when the Iraqi government’s interests dictate that it provide assistance to Assad (or at least allow the Iranians to send that assistance by way of Iraq).