As Iraq slides into open sectarian warfare, the Obama administration has come under an onslaught of criticism for pulling U.S. troops out of the country in 2011, allowing insurgents to unravel a fragile peace. Critics, including David Brooks at The New York Times, have cited Dexter Filkin's reporting in The New Yorker that negotiations to keep American troops in Iraq fell apart "in no small measure because of lack of engagement by the White House."
But of course the story is not that simple. In a column at The Washington Post outlining the sectarian authoritarian tendencies of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki — a Shiite with no love for his former Sunni oppressors — Fareed Zakaria writes:
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