President Barack Obama left a vacuum of power by withdrawing U.S. troops in 2011 before the Iraqi security forces were really prepared to function on their own, and that's why Iraq is on the verge of collapse, Ret. U.S. Marine Jesse Jane Duff said on
Newsmax TV.
"So what it all boils down to is that when you withdraw and you haven't finished, you now leave a sucking vacuum of ability for al-Qaida to step on in and replace," Duff told Ed Berliner on "Midpoint" Friday.
"It's just bad foreign policy," she explained. "The Mideast is critical for us."
Duff said that while people are saying that "we have no business" intervening in the conflict in Iraq, she said the problem is that "we already did."
"So if you are going to do it, then make sure that you close out appropriately, not walk out," she explained. "And that's essentially what our country did."
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According to the former gunnery sergeant, when the United States pulled its troops out of Iraq in 2011, the Iraqis "actually were on the road to stability."
"The pulling out is what caused all of this to happen," she said.
Duff said she does support using airstrikes to help out the Iraqi military in their fight against the insurgents, but "we should have done that about four months ago," since the ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) had already captured Fallujah in January.
"You don't want to be ever in a reactionary mode," the former Marine said. "You want to be in a proactive mode and we're not performing proactively. Proactive ensures that you're sending a strong statement of support for the country that we had shaken hands with."
"We are simply in a position where al-Qaida-inspired militants from the ISIS have overrun Mosul on Tuesday, seized government buildings, pushed out security forces, and have captured military vehicles," she explained. "This is just insane what has happened."
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