Quote:
Originally Posted by mantisG35
american casualties, deaths, $$$, and the fact that nothing has been accomplished except for sectarian pro-iran government and a huge presence of islamic militant groups everywhere. how did you win?!
the US needs to win politically so peace is established. if there's no peace, there will always be militant groups
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(EDIT: Compared to previous wars, the cost of the current war is extremely low both in terms of soldiers' lives and taxpayer dollars. Even in the midst of this war our total defense spending is only 4% of GDP compared to 6+% during the "peaceful" 1980's. These are not numbers that reflect a war lost.)
The political is dependent on the military. We cannot solve Iraq's political issues for them but we can certainly set the conditions for those political issues to be resolved. That is the basis for GEN Patraeus' strategy and there are very good indications that it is working. We can help remove the external forces that have been the source of a large portion of the instability inside Iraq and create a buffer between the internal factions until they resolve their differences politically. If you read about the success we have had recently in converting the Sunni tribes in Anbar and Diyala away from supporting al Qaeda to active opposition to them, the key to this success has been our commitment to remain once al Qaeda left the area. The Sunnis have come to understand that al Qaeda's objectives were not their own but they did not have the strength to remove them from their midst without outside help. They do not yet trust the Shi'ite dominated government forces (for good reason) but they are beginning to trust us. This trust is indispensable to defeating al Qaeda and subsequently creating stability for political progress.
If the Sunnis grow to trust us and the Shi'ite's trust improves as al Qaeda is less capable of targeting them (the Kurds do generally trust us) then we have set conditions were no one side feels threatened by the others and political issues can be resolved. An Iraq where Sunnis do not feel they have to rely on foreign forces like al Qaeda to protect them from Shi'ite and Shi'ite do not feel they need Iranian support to protect them from the Sunni and the Kurds do not feel threatened by the Arabs is success for us.