Iraq--hard but not hopeless

NY Times:

Gen. David H. Petraeus formally took command of American troops in Iraq on Saturday, declaring that the mission here is hard but not hopeless.

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“The rucksack of responsibility is very heavy,” General Petraeus said, after beginning his speech with the Muslim greeting “salaam aleikum,” or “peace be upon you.”

“In truth, it is too heavy for any one person to bear, and we will all have to share the burdens and move forward together,” he said.

“If we can do that and if we can help the people of Iraq do likewise, then the prospects for success are good,” he said. “Failing that, Iraq will be doomed to continuing violence and civil strife and surely that is a prospect all must strive to avoid. The stakes are very high.”

General Casey, whose tactics have come under blistering attack recently in Congress, emphasized that Iraq would need to take responsibility for its own troubles if it was to ever move forward. Before the ceremony, he told reporters: “Everything is not as I would have expected it to be or wanted it to be on my way out. But that’s kind of the way things are.”

Asked about whether he had made any mistakes in his tenure, he said, “The main point that people will debate for some time to come is whether I relied too much on Iraqi security forces to carry the security load and too little on coalition forces.”

“But I’m certainly not ready to say that’s a mistake,” he said. “I’ll let history judge that.”

He later added: “My greatest fear is that Iraqis can’t put the past behind them. We liberated them from 35 years of tyranny. We can’t liberate them from the fears and prejudices that grew up in that 35 years. They have to do that themselves.”

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I think Casey can be criticized for turning things over to the Iraqis before they were ready for the responsibility. That was win things started deteriorating, and the gold dome mosque bombing accelerated the deteriorating. Gen Petraeus makes an important point when it comes to hope. The situation in Iraq is indeed not hopeless when looked at in terms of what our military forces can do with the Iraqis. People who never wanted to win this war have always thought it hopeless, but that point of view is based on an ignorance of military history and a political point of view that sees political gain from US defeat. It is the job of the military to convince the enemy that his cause is hopeless.