This interview of General Abizaid is about the most useful statement anyone has said about Iraq in a while:
Goudreau: We've been told Americans will stand down when Iraqis stand up. The number - 274,000 Iraqi troops - is a very impressive number. Yet this impressive number of Iraqi troops has not resulted in a decrease in violence. How do you assess the Iraqi army troop strength in terms of its capacity to take on this mission?
Abizaid: It's a great question. Remember where we started. We started at the number zero with Iraqi armed forces. We've gone up to 130,000 army troops. The rest of the 275,000 are police, a lot of different armed groups that work for the government. On paper at least, there's plenty of armed forces in Iraq, one would think, to do what has to be done.
But when you start in 2003 at zero, and you're starting with the legacy of a dictator that used to fill up mass graves with their own countrymen, you have to understand, it's just not a matter of giving them weapons and putting them in uniform. It's a matter of training them how to respect the rights of their own people, how to deal with a totally new system of elective governance. You also have to train the new Iraqi army in how to deal with counterinsurgency problems.
There is a long-term training problem. There is a long-term education problem for the officer corps in particular.
The minister of interior has only been there four months. He has never served at very high levels of governance. He is trying to figure out his way. The minister of defense - he's been a soldier; he's further along but has been a minister four months. Immature government lengthens the time necessary.
Discipline - it has been a problem for everybody that Iraq has yet to approve a military code of justice.
Discipline has been poor in some units but strikingly good in others. Iraqi special operations forces are some of the best in the Middle East. Others have disappointed us greatly.
The whole problem is, we have to turn over more and more of the responsibility for fighting the country's battles to the Iraqis. We don't win if we stay there forever. We don't win if we increase the number of American troops to 500,000. We don't win if we do everything for them. We have to let them run Iraq on Iraq's terms, in ways their own people want. We have to let go of more and more of the reins.
Am I optimistic that the army and security forces of Iraq can meet the challenge? Yes, I am. In most of the country, they are.
You don't just whistle up a functioning democracy with a completely established military force in just a year or two - its takes time, and there will be failures and set backs along the way. The problem with the critics of our liberation of Iraq is that they are both impatient and unrealistic. They are demanding that we completely make over Iraq the day after we liberated it, and they are also demanding that our campaign in Iraq go off without a hitch.
More and more I'm seeing gloom and doom about Iraq - and it flabbergasts me. This is the most effective counter-insurgency/nation-building effort since the British in Malaya 50 years ago - and we're doing it under rules of engagement which would be unimaginable for soldiers back then. We're under the microscope - so intense is the scruitiny, indeed, that for lack of real failures to condemn us over, the critics even make things up from time to time, just to have an anti-American angle to play. With all of the stresses of war and counter-insurgency, our troops are also having to deal with an MSM and political opposition who are waiting to leap on the least error in judgement - and they are doing a superb job.
The war is going well - but you wouldn't know it if you listen to the MSM and Democrats - so, my advice is to just stop listening to them. Its a bunch of yadda, yadda, yadda from them - if you want to know what the MSM/DNC will say in any given circumstances, just drop me an e mail and I'll write it out for you...it is so predictable, that you could probably write a computer program which would generate news stories and DNC talking points (I know, a redundancy) from one or two input words.
Posted by Mark Noonan at October 11, 2006 09:15 AM
Comments
I stopped listening and watching the Alien Media Nation just as the Foley deal hit. Smelled too much like Rathergate to me. I actually ignored headlines and the like for the last several days and I am more and more optimistic about the election and the world in general. Wonder why that is???
DLC
Posted by: Daniel La Corte at October 11, 2006 09:37 AM
Not only do the critics castigate our forces them for the slightest violation of the rules of war, but have no problem with an enemy that plays by no rules whatsoever. Our troops are fighting against both a hideously evil enemy and against the brazen double standard of their critics.
Posted by: Bigfoot at October 11, 2006 09:39 AM
The problem with the critics of our liberation of Iraq is that they are both impatient and unrealistic.
Um no Mark, that would have been richard perle, donald rumsfeld, douglas feith, paul wolfowitz, dick cheney, and of course, george bush who all IMPATIENTLY wanted to go into iraq believing their own UNREALISTIC assertions that:
(1)it would be relatively easy (wolfowitz, feith)
(2)it could be fought on the cheap (perle)
(3)we would be greeted as liberators (cheney)
(4)the war might last 6 days, 6 weeks, but i doubt 6 months (rumsfeld)
(5)there would be WMD's!!!!!!!!!!!!(captain mission accomplished)
the real problem here is that these 'critics' you speak of feel duped, sold, lied to and misled, and rightly so.
Posted by: orangealert at October 11, 2006 09:57 AM
oh, and nothing like the loss of 650,000 plus iraqis (a majority innocent civilians no doubt) and 2700 US soldiers to focus the mind...
yes mark, indeed, the war is going well - swimmingly as ann coulter would say.
"6 days, 6 weeks, i doubt 6 MONTHS"
Posted by: orangealert at October 11, 2006 10:08 AM
one wonders how much, if any, improvement would've resulted in the Iraqi political landscape if we hadn't decommissioned the Iraqi army, except for the Republican guard, but instead had used them to establish military control transitioning into elections?
too many (incorrect) assumptions were made as to the post-Sadaam era.
too little worst case planning.
Posted by: OhioOrrin at October 11, 2006 10:38 AM
And let's not forget Rumsfeld's arrogant insistence that the occupation force consist of no more than 100,000 troops, which was proven enormously foolish just a few months later.
This was one of the Bush administration's stupidest and most damaging decisions of the war, and they were willing to publicly trash our military leaders in order to get their way.
Posted by: other_nate at October 11, 2006 11:52 AM
speaking of "stupidest and most damaging" - if anyone did not think bush comes across as a bumbling idiot who has NO IDEA what the hell he is saying, surely they must now after this press conference.
Posted by: orangealert at October 11, 2006 12:06 PM
Posted by: other_nate at October 11, 2006 12:10 PM
You mean you can't microwave people into soldiers? Shocking........
Posted by: semby at October 11, 2006 12:21 PM
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I stopped listening and watching the Alien Media Nation just as the Foley deal hit. Smelled too much like Rathergate to me. I actually ignored headlines and the like for the last several days and I am more and more optimistic about the election and the world in general. Wonder why that is???
DLC
Not only do the critics castigate our forces them for the slightest violation of the rules of war, but have no problem with an enemy that plays by no rules whatsoever. Our troops are fighting against both a hideously evil enemy and against the brazen double standard of their critics.
Um no Mark, that would have been richard perle, donald rumsfeld, douglas feith, paul wolfowitz, dick cheney, and of course, george bush who all IMPATIENTLY wanted to go into iraq believing their own UNREALISTIC assertions that:
(1)it would be relatively easy (wolfowitz, feith)
(2)it could be fought on the cheap (perle)
(3)we would be greeted as liberators (cheney)
(4)the war might last 6 days, 6 weeks, but i doubt 6 months (rumsfeld)
(5)there would be WMD's!!!!!!!!!!!!(captain mission accomplished)
the real problem here is that these 'critics' you speak of feel duped, sold, lied to and misled, and rightly so.
oh, and nothing like the loss of 650,000 plus iraqis (a majority innocent civilians no doubt) and 2700 US soldiers to focus the mind...
yes mark, indeed, the war is going well - swimmingly as ann coulter would say.
"6 days, 6 weeks, i doubt 6 MONTHS"
one wonders how much, if any, improvement would've resulted in the Iraqi political landscape if we hadn't decommissioned the Iraqi army, except for the Republican guard, but instead had used them to establish military control transitioning into elections?
too many (incorrect) assumptions were made as to the post-Sadaam era.
too little worst case planning.
And let's not forget Rumsfeld's arrogant insistence that the occupation force consist of no more than 100,000 troops, which was proven enormously foolish just a few months later.
This was one of the Bush administration's stupidest and most damaging decisions of the war, and they were willing to publicly trash our military leaders in order to get their way.
speaking of "stupidest and most damaging" - if anyone did not think bush comes across as a bumbling idiot who has NO IDEA what the hell he is saying, surely they must now after this press conference.
What press conference?
You mean you can't microwave people into soldiers? Shocking........