THIRTEEN YEARS IN IRAQ

Fred Kaplan breaks down Retired General Barry McCaffrey's assessment of the situation in Iraq.

Good news and bad news on the war in Iraq: The good news is that victory is possible, our troops are the best ever, the Iraqi army is getting bigger and better, and most Iraqi people want a pluralistic government. The bad news is that it will take 10 more years to accomplish these successes—at least three years just to get the Iraqi military into shape.
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The significance of this memo is that it reveals—from an optimistic but realistic insider's perspective—the magnitude of the price, and it's probably way higher than what the vast majority of Americans are willing to pay.
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The bottom line: "We need at least two-to-five more years of U.S. partnership and combat backup to get the Iraqi Army ready to stand on its own." (Emphasis added.)

McCaffrey adds that it will take ten years to get the Iraqi police in shape. And all of this will take a whole heck of a lot more U.S. taxpayer money (probably hundreds of billions) for reconstruction efforts, economic aid, supporting our own military, training of the Iraqi soldiers, police and government officials. Add to that the casualties the American military and innocent Iraqis will continue to suffer. And all this is a simple gamble that at the end we will prevail and somehow the Middle East will be better for it (oh yes, and Americans made safer. We'll be bankrupt economically and morally, but by George Dubya, we'll be SAFER.

So today as Republicans in Congress play their little political drama trying to link the war in Iraq with the war on terror and insist that the only thing we can do is to "stay the course" until Iraqi military, police and political institutions can stand on their own, they should be noting that staying the course means ten more years of this increasingly costly, in terms of both human life and diminishing treasury, boondoggle. Do we have the will for it?

I think not.

Tags: Iraq war, Gen. Barry McCaffrey