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?
More at AMERICAblog The Heretik, Think Progress and, especially, Neptunus Lex.
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