The Free Press, Mankato, MN

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June 24, 2008

Progress in Iraq: Is it enough?

In early 2005, three Iraqi army or security units out of 115 were considered by the Pentagon to be “Level 1” capable units, those able to plan and execute counterinsurgency operations on their own with no assistance from Americans.

A report this week by the Government Accountability Office estimates there are now possibly 10 percent of Iraqi forces that can operate on their own. But that apparent progress — from 2.5 percent ready to 10 percent ready — masks the real issue.

While the GAO estimates that 10 percent of the forces could operate without U.S. assistance, the U.S. Commander in Baghdad Lt. Gen. Lloyd Austin said Monday that “there are no areas...that we would be willing to separate out right now to dedicate specifically to the Iraqi security forces. We’ve been clear about saying that they’re not there yet. There are still some things that need to be done,” he told the Associated Press.

The training of Iraqis to be able to provide their own security and stability remains key to U.S. troop involvement and withdrawal. It seems in four years time, the progress has not been terribly encouraging. At the rate of that improvement — 10 percent readiness every four years — it would take 40 years to get the Iraqi security forces to be completely self sufficient.

Even the Pentagon appears to be suggesting U.S. troops in Iraqi cannot maintain this kind of commitment. On Monday, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen, suggesting things were better in Baghdad but suggested the current reductions in troops there would be needed to shore up operations in Afghanistan where it has been widely reported the Taliban is gaining foothold again in key areas.

At the same time, it’s clear the incidents of violence have been reduced in many Iraqi areas since the U.S. troop surge that began in 2007. But even with the scheduled pullout of close to 30,000 surge troops, total U.S. forces in Iraq in July will be about 142,000, or 7,000 more than when the surge began, according to the Pentagon. That force is about 20 percent of all regular U.S. Army and Marine forces.

Year-to-year violent attacks have been down by double digit figures, but in March and April of this year violent attacks were up 54 percent as a result of Iraqi security forces and militias clashing in Basra. These relatively small uprisings could go on for years.

The GAO report and the quarterly report to Congress also point out that Iran and Syria continue to supply insurgents in Iraq with weapons and funding, and access to cross their borders. The Iraqi economy is fragile at best and Iraq has a weak political structure and cannot manage its economy and significant oil reserves.

The quarterly report to Congress said the Iraqi government “lacks the ability to execute programs on the scale required,” and economic improvements remain “fragile, reversible and uneven.”

These reports remain the stubborn facts of the U.S. involvement in Iraq. Certainly, the U.S. soldiers who serve and have served in Iraq have made a difference. Iraq is no longer a country run by a brutal dictator. A lot of its infrastructure is being rebuilt. The U.S. continues to be generous with reconstruction money.

Still, the reports provide a realistic picture of just how much success the U.S. will have in making Iraq an even moderately stable democracy in the Middle East. U.S. soldiers continue to be victims of what now seems to be an Iraq civil war.

We continually need to review these Congress-mandated reports and not be locked into one strategy or another, no matter how they play politically on the homefront. They will provide us with a good cost-benefit analysis of the U.S. involvement in Iraq.

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