But four years later, as Iraqi cities fell to ISIS, the administration and its defenders argued that the removal of U.S. troops had not really been Obama’s decision to make. Maliki, they insisted, had refused to provide immunity for any U.S. troops who stayed in Iraq after the expiration of the status-of-forces agreement that Bush and Maliki had agreed to years earlier. There was some truth to that claim, but it was also true that Obama hadn’t pressed Maliki very hard on the issue. And most damaging of all, Obama had abruptly reduced the level of diplomatic engagement between Iraq and the United States, leaving Sunnis feeling isolated and vulnerable to Maliki’s overtly anti-Sunni sectarian regime.