Most Americans may share Mr. Obama’s readiness to dismiss this mess. But Iraq’s failure will do more than reverse the gains won by the hundreds of thousands of Americans who served there over nine years. Al-Qaeda and its affiliates are close to consolidating control of a wide swath of territory extending across western Iraq and northern Syria. U.S. intelligence chiefs have told Congress that the extremists, who have attracted thousands of recruits from around the Middle East and Europe, aspire to launch attacks against the U.S. homeland. The Obama administration may hope that a new Iraqi government can eliminate this threat; the odds are that it will not.
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