Retired Army General Barry McCaffrey on Iraq
Retired army general Barry McCaffrey “released a dire assessment of the situation in Iraq, based on a recent round of meetings there with Gen. David H. Petraeus and 16 other senior U.S. commanders.”
He wrote, among other things, that “the population is in despair” and that “life in many of the urban areas is now desperate.”
That being said, McCaffrey sees reason for hope. Seven reasons even:
1st: The Maliki government has given the green light to prune out elements of the renegade Sadr organization in Baghdad…
2nd: The US and Iraqi Forces have now dramatically changed their operational scheme. More then 50+ Iraqi Police/Army and US Army Joint Security Stations (JSS) are now being emplaced across the city and extended into the suburbs…
3rd: The Iraqis have finally committed credible numbers of integrated Police and Army units to the battle of Baghdad…
4th: There is a real and growing ground swell of Sunni tribal opposition to the Al Qaeda-in-Iraq terror formations…
5th: The equipment and resources for the Iraqi Security Forces has increased dramatically…
6th: Reconciliation of the internal warring elements in Iraq will be how we eventually win the war in Iraq—-if it happens. There is a very sophisticated and carefully integrated approach by the Iraqi government and Coalition actors to defuse the armed violence from internal enemies and bring people into the political process…
7th: US Combat forces are simply superb…
In other words: the U.S. can still achieve its objectives. These objectives are: “a stable Iraq, at peace with its neighbors, not producing weapons of mass destruction, and fully committed to a law-based government…
Our central purpose is to allow the nation to re-establish governance based on some loose federal consensus among the three major ethnic-factional actors.”
So, on the one hand: things are quite bad in Iraq right now, on the hand it has been even worse and… the U.S. can still succeed.
In that regard, I wish I shared McCaffrey’s positive attitude.
I have to admit that the contradicting information is becoming a bit confusing as well. Now I read that progress is being made, violence is decreasing, and that members of the army and other experts think that the U.S. might still be successful, and 30 minutes later I read about how Sunni insurgents killed dozens of Shia and how Shia insurgents took revenge by executing dozens of Sunnis.
Recently, I published a post at my own blog, saying that I simply don’t know what to do about Iraq. My view hasn’t changed. I still don’t know what to do.
It’s not the popular thing to do, as a blogger, to admit that one really does not know what to do, that one has no suggestions, etc. but… it’s the truth.
Any of you have an idea?
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16 Responses to “Retired Army General Barry McCaffrey on Iraq”
How can anyone honestly know what to do when the scene changes every 5 minutes?
The surge is not fully in place. At least we have to finish that part before assessing whether it’s a failure or not.
I hope the administration is smart enough to continue diplomatic efforts in the meantime.
My opinion is that anyone who says he knows exactly what to do knows less than those who don’t know.
My fear is that we’ll be debating this for years on end until we have riots in the streets.
I read this morning that the Saudis and Jordan have both cancelled state visits planned for the fall. This does not bode well for dimplomacy on any front: Iraq, Israel/Palestine or Iran.
Some of the downturn in violence was expected, Sadr gave instructions to his militia to stand down before the US began patrols in Sadr City. The big change was not the number of coalition troops performing patrols, it was the newfound willingness by Maliki [read intense pressure by Gates] to take on the Shiite militias that were engaging in almost wholesale slaughter of Sunnis. Some of the ministries still need to be cleaned out, but at least a start has been made. If the Sunnis can see an end to the attacks by Shiites, and Shiites show a willingness to stop the militias, then it might be possible to have some sort of reconciliation. That is a mighty tall order, the attacks are still going on, and people who show signs of reconciliation are subject to assassination. My fundamental problem still remains, what happens when we leave? Sadr can recreate his militia, SCIRI is still a [armed] political force, the Bathists have access stores of weapons and the Kurds still do not want to be embroiled in the Sunni/Shiite religious war. I still am of the opinion that even if violence subsides we will be fooling ourselves if we think that is the new permanent state of affairs. Any final judgment on the surge having worked will only come after we leave and the Iraqis are on their own. I still favor a partition of the country, but that possibility is not even being discussed.
It probably depends on what part of the country and which neighborhoods you look at, Doma. Also, the surge just gives them one more chance to reconcile-we can’t force it on them. There’s no doubt that surging soldiers into Baghdad can create temporary stability- though other areas like Tall Afar have become violent again- but the question is if the government can bring the warring factions together in a few short months. I believe Maliki is desperate to do this, but he can’t do it alone, and we can’t help with that. It sounds like the Iraqi population is still lacking basic necessities of electricity , jobs , housing and clean water-which won’t help the government regain control.
I understand your point, Michael, about the conflicting reports but I actually think that’s to be expected. For one thing, parts of Baghdad and Iraq in general may be faring better than others, and compared to past weeks/months they may be better but still quite bad. And Petraeus and other military leaders have said that they expect violence to get worse in some instances before it gets better, and the surge troops aren’t even all in place yet, etc, etc. It’s really way too soon to know if this is going to ‘work’ or not.
What I’m curious about more than the day to day violence is whether there’s been any progress at all on the political front. We don’t seem to get much news of that and I’m not inclined to think that no news is good news. Does anyone know any good sources reporting on the political situation in detail? I think that would be far more telling than analyzing the security situation which is changing minute by minute and block by block (so it’s rather hard to get a general overall assessment of it anyway).
CS- Moderate Voters just posted a good article detailing rising opposition within the Shiite sect to a debaathification measure. It looks like they are afraid that the Sunnis will expect to be reinstated into positions of power within the government, which would jeopardize the dominant position that the Shiites presently hold.
kritter, good point. A lot of the conflict is over political patronage in a society where abuse of office for ones own gain is acceptable, at least for the people who benefit from it. There is grumbling in the Kurdish areas over how taxes are being spent by the government and who is in charge of what local ministry. Needless to say with all of the other problems we are dealing with civics is not part of the agenda
Thanks, Kim, I’ll check it out.
I don’t think it’s a matter of just comparing areas. I think it’s significant when a decrease in violence in Baghdad is followed by Tel Afar.
On the plus side, this is just one incident. But if more incidents like this pop up, it could mean that the trouble makers just move camp. That could mean that we’ll need a surge to cover the entire country.
It’s a minute by minute change of scenario, and it seems to me it’s way too early to take any definitive stock of things.
I imagine it must seem like betrayal to see the leglslators make all this -bail out of iraq- noise.
I think more accurately, you will, we will see, that they deserve an academy award for fake behaviour.
By all this fuss, we make iran think that they have every reason to defy the UN. israel is also making all these weak sounding noises and actions. It is to sucker in the iranians.
I believe. And the iranians are going for it.
War will come to them, and it must. Your government is doing all sorts of misinformation to help the war effort.
The arabs are fooled. Dont you be.
Iraq is like the forrests of the US Northwest during summer. Stomp out one fire and heat lightining starts one somewhere else. The problem is Iraq is in eternal summer, so this isn’t going to go away untill we put 400k+ troops in there and there is no public will leftt to do so, atleast not with the Keystone Cops running the show in D.C.
The problem is that we do not have 400,000 and so can only help to keep the peace in Baghdad, and maybe in Anbar. The rest is up to the Iraqis- and if we remember that they are in the middle of a civil war, then it becomes really obvious that no matter what we do, if they can’t manage to come up with some kind of power-sharing , revenue-sharing agreement, it won’t work. The surge sounds like the strategy that should have been used at the beginning instead of the end.
If we are not out by ’08 the next president will get us out. McCain is the only one of the front-runners calling for a continued presence, and it is really bringing him down. Unfortunately, the news is finally getting better, but it is too late.
B McCaffery is a former General who seems to speak the truth. He doesn’t seem to have a political agenda. Maybe he can walk unarmed in Bahgdada with McClown to show how things are going.
I don’t know, Rudi. I don’t remember McCaffery speaking “the truth” about the War on (some) Drugs when he was President Clinton’s Drug Czar.
Then again, maybe the General is more discerning about wars our government wages abroad than those it wages against its own citizens.
Barry’s kind of all over the map on this – as he usually is. Still, its too damn bad he couldn’t have pig wrestled Cheney and Rummy the Dummy for Dubya’s ear.
–Ron
http://revolttoday.blogspot.com/index.html
There’s a reason that there isn’t any opposition to the war in Afghanistan. We all know why we’re there, we all know what victory is: defeat of al Qaeda and the destruction of a terrorist safe haven.
What is our overriding purpose for being in Iraq?
1.) The WMD threat was non-existent.
2.) Our own policy is the reason Iraq is currently unstable and a threat to it’s neighbors.
3.) We cannot force a nation to become committed to rule-of-law. People have to believe in it themselves.
That’s worth a half-trillion dollars? Why should we care if Iraq is a loose confederation, or three different states?
None of these are overriding concerns for the American people.