Tonight in Charlotte, at the Democratic convention, the Obama administration is expected to trumpet its foreign policy and national security record. It’s therefore worth taking a look at what President Obama has actually done.

The president’s signature campaign promise—withdrawing U.S. forces from Iraq—has had serious and potentially grave consequences. The Obama administration’s early rhetoric on ending the war quickly caused Nouri al-Maliki to realize, as retired Army Gen. Jack Keane testified this year, “that his relationship with the United States Government had changed dramatically from what was previously his experience under the Bush administration.” Baghdad subsequently rejected the Obama administration’s proposed residual U.S. military presence, and America’s hard-won influence in Iraq has now been undermined. Al Qaeda and other extremist groups continue to wage a deadly campaign against Iraqi civilians; the nation is nearly defenseless against external attack. Iraqi politics are paralyzed; and, having been left to fend on his own without a residual American force to keep him oriented towards the West, Prime Minister Maliki has demonstrated an alarming illiberal streak in his style of governing and been drawn deeper into Tehran’s orbit, even acquiescing to Iran’s use of Iraqi airspace to help bolster the regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria.