Iraqi Reality Check

Tuesday, 10th February 2009

Right now, Afghanistan has become, if you will, the trendy war again. So much so, in fact, that it's now Iraq that threatens to be the "forgotten war". Some of this is obviously due to Barack Obama's promise to bring American troops home within 16 months and some of it because, frankly, Iraq has left everyone exhausted and keen to talk about, well, just about anything else. Here's a reality check from Thomas Ricks, however. His new book The Gamble looks like being a must-read:

The other thing that people don’t understand is that this war is far from over. It has changed several times, and it is changing again now, but it hasn’t ended. The surge succeeded militarily, but it failed politically, because it was supposed to create a “breathing space” in which the country’s fundamental problems could be addressed. None—not one—have been solved. Not the status of the disputed city of Kirkuk, or the power relationship between the country’s three major groups, or most importantly the manner in which oil revenue will be shared.

I think we are stuck in Iraq for many years to come. Gen. Odierno told me last November that he’d like to see at least 30,000 U.S. troops in Iraq in 2015, long after President Obama’s first term will have ended. What this bodes, I think, is that Obama’s war in Iraq may well be longer than Bush’s war there.

Perhaps Ricks is wrong, but what if he isn't?

Filed under: Iraq (159 more articles)

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Anthony

February 10th, 2009 2:56pm Report this comment

I think Tom Ricks is probably correct. I know some smart people who think that the progress in Iraq has been such that it will be very hard to reverse, but I think it's fair to say that they are in a minority.

In many ways, those who support the Iraq campaign and have spent the last six months blathering on about how "We've won" (generally the same people who've reckoned we were on the very cusp of victory every week since summer 2003) are not doing themselves any favours because that provides a massive opening for opponents to ask why, if we've won, it's so vital for the troop presence to be maintained.

ndm

February 10th, 2009 6:09pm Report this comment

I think we can take General Odierno's words with a grain of salt because it is my impression the American military likes to be in action. It all helps budgetary rivalry between the various sections of the military - how long can it be until the US Navy repurposes to fight piracy?. I'm not saying that as a criticism I just think it is human nature that people like doing rather than training to be doing.

I also think the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq put the lie to three decades of American claims that its military was designed to fight in two theatres simultaneously. It clearly was not and the American public is paying a heavy price for Pentagon folly - as, indeed, are the people who died unnecessarily as a consequence of two ill-planned wars.

The surge was fine and dandy but it was years too late and far too small. Once the Americans allowed the Iraqi conflict to spiral out of control - oh, round about the time of the catastrophic looting of Baghdad - I thought the only real options were to leave or reinvade with a force large enough to totally suppress the country. Absent a draft, of course, the latter was not a real option - and a draft was never a possibility. And so we have muddled along as hundreds of thousands of Iraqis died for no cause and far too many supporters of the war continue to be unrepentant about causing so much bloodshed and so much misery.

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