Iraqi Defense Minister: U.S. help needed until at least 2018

January 15, 2008

Over the last couple of months, much of the political discussion regarding the U.S. policy in Iraq has been centered around the perception of progress. Civilian casualties are down. Military casualties are down. Political progress doesn’t seem quite as elusive. Iraq 2008 appears more like Iraq 2005 than Iraq 2006. No matter what the specifics of the question, conservative Republicans answer the same way: Bush’s policy is “working.”

On the flip side, of course, is reality. Iraq is still unstable and unsafe. Political progress is practically non-existent. And for all the GOP talk about “victory” and “success,” we continue to get news like this.

The Iraqi defense minister said Monday that his nation would not be able to take full responsibility for its internal security until 2012, nor be able on its own to defend Iraq’s borders from external threat until at least 2018.

Those comments from the minister, Abdul Qadir, were among the most specific public projections of a timeline for the American commitment in Iraq by officials in either Washington or Baghdad. And they suggested a longer commitment than either government had previously indicated.

Pentagon officials expressed no surprise at Mr. Qadir’s projections, which were even less optimistic than those he made last year.

There are quite a few key parts of Qadir’s remarks, but the fact that he’s “less optimistic” may be the most striking. After all, the Kristol/McCain/Lieberman wing of the political spectrum is telling us, incessantly, about how encouraged we should all be, and chastising anyone who dares to question what they see as incontrovertible progress.

And yet, here we have the Iraqi defense minister conceding that Iraq won’t even be able to control its own streets for another four years (eight Friedmans), or protect itself from foreign rivals for another 10 years (20 Friedmans). In fact, he went on to suggest it might not be until 2020 that the country can fully protect the integrity of Iraq’s borders.

For that matter, “Pentagon officials expressed no surprise at Mr. Qadir’s projections”? Why not? Maybe because the Bush administration thinks Qadir is right and the U.S. commitment should last at least as long as he’s projecting?

Matt Yglesias sees these target dates as having a political utility.

This is, in my view, the key to breaking the political deadlock over Iraq in the United States. A large number of people agree with my preference for an expeditious withdrawal from Iraq. Unfortunately, though, it’s not a majority of people. But the number of people who favor the sort of decade-plus engagement that constitutes the actual alternative to expeditious withdrawal is incredibly small. What’s needed, however, are political leaders who are willing and able to re-enforce the point that’s been revealed again and again by American reporters — the alternative to leaving is staying for a very, very, very long time.

Sounds right to me. How about some enterprising reporters start pushing the presidential candidates on their take?

Poor guy, doesn’t seem to realize that the moment we leave Iraq will cease to be a country with borders to defend.

Sorry, I see no reason to stay until 2018 to protect a government bent on ethnic cleansing and genocide.

  • “Pentagon officials expressed no surprise at Mr. Qadir’s projections, which were even less optimistic than those he made last year.”

    Of course Mr. Qadir doesn’t want the spigot turned off for all the cash that flows from our wallets into his. Why would he want the umbilical cord cut when it’s making his bank accounts swell. It’s not only American companies who are profiting from the billions of dollars the US is hemorrhaging over Iraq.

  • I don’t think Joe Sixpack cares what happens over there, except that our kids are being killed. And since the media says that fewer of our kids are being killed, in Joe’s opinion things are getting better. He wants a happy ending to the mess he knows he helped make, and there’s almost no way to persuade him that things aren’t actually getting better. If a full-blown civil war broke out over there, Joe would say “eh”, as long as our kids weren’t being killed and the price of gas stays under $4. Hell, even when hundreds of our kids were being killed every month, Joe hardly gave a damn because it wasn’t his kid, and Mitch McConnell says they all volunteered anyway so it’s not a huge deal. And truth be told, the US is addicted to oil, and until we break that addiction* we’ll have a huge stake over there, no matter how bad it gets.

    Never forget, Joe is a selfish bastard. Look at the poll numbers, “the economy” is now the #1 issue, and Iraq has become yesterday’s news, despite the fact that the surge is about to end and roots of the underlying violence are still there waiting to pop back up. Everyone with a brain knows the surge didn’t work, but Joe Sixpack lives in Clueless Town and the media likes to keep him there.

    The SIMPLE meme we need to push is this: The Republicans think we should stay in Iraq, essentially forever, not because they give a damn about the Iraqis, but because they want our kids to guard the oil. Joe knows this. He also knows there are alternatives to oil addiction, but he doesn’t know how we’re going to get there. What he knows, but what needs to be drummed into his thick skull, is that Democrats think we should invest in the future, and use American know-how to break our oil addiction and get the hell out of there. Republicans think we should stand there in the sand and die for ExxonMobil. They have blocked our escape from oil addiction, and they will do so until we get rid of them.

    So here’s your choice, Joe: You can vote for the people who put solar panels on the whitehouse, or you can vote for the people who tore them down. Your choice.

    *FYI the global addiction to oil can be broken. And the way we got addicted is an interesting story in and of itself. Did you know that Henry Ford’s early cars ran fine on 100% alcohol, 100% gasoline, or any combination thereof? Oil magnate John D. Rockefeller funded Prohibition in order to drive the American alcohol fuel companies out of business. And here we are, almost 100 years later, still being played by the oil companies. Forget everything you’ve heard about ethanol, and check this out:

    http://www.alcoholcanbeagas.com/

    Alcohol myths debunked here:
    http://www.alcoholcanbeagas.net/node/518

  • We aren’t staying for oil. As long as we can pay the market price, we can have oil. We are staying for oil company profits. We are staying for military industrial profits. We are staying for Israel.

  • Two new units for measuring Iraq Time in one month! The “Qadir,” apparently equal to ten years, and the McCain, equal to a hundred or a thousand or something. The Friedman is so six months ago.

  • I cannot understand why no one has held the Bush administration accountable for the disaster in Iraq. It’s ridiculous now that the media and the Republicans, and to some extent the Democrats, are measuring progress against the worst period of chaos and violence in Iraq, rather than the stability of the country before we invaded. But it has happened. The Democrats have allowed the Iraq crisis to be framed this way. So everyone seems to accept our presence there as long as things are better than they were, rather than demanding the heads of the guys who got us caught in this pointless mess that is sapping our economic vitality and is apparently going to continue forever.

    Why are we there? How can it possibly be worth all the blood and treasure that it’s costing us, and the Iraqis? Are we there for the oil? Probably. To placate the Israeli lobby? Probably. To prevent the disaster in Iraq that we caused from becoming even worse? Probably. For political reasons, to save face for Bush and the Republicans and the Democrats who initially supported it? Absolutely.

    Everyone should read the article in the January 2008 issue of Scientific American, which provides a plan to develop solar energy to supply 69% of our electricity and 35% of our total energy needs by the year 2050. The investment would cost $400 billion over 40 years. When you think that we’ve already wasted twice that in Iraq, apparently for the oil, it makes you want to scream and cry in outrage and despair. What is wrong with this country? And by doing so, of course, we’d go a long way toward solving the global warming problem.

    The media has characterized this presidential campaign as a call for “change,” but none of the Democratic candidates has the vision or the political courage to tell the American people what we need to do as a nation. And of course, the Republicans are absolutely hopeless.

    We are truly stuck in a rut. Americans accept the word of Bush and the oil companies that any serious investment in alternative energy would wreck our economy and destroy our standard of living. The opposite is true, but we just can’t seem to muster the will to overcome the establishment.

  • Where does Yglesias get the idea that it is not a ‘majority’ of people who back a precipitous withdrawal? He needs to recheck his polls as this is simply not the case. The ‘majority’ of Americans want a complete withdrawal from Iraq ASAP.

    What the Iraqi Defense Minister is not saying is the reason he believes our forces will be needed to remain in Iraq…there are still live Sunnis there…sectarian cleansing is not complete yet…at least to the extent that the Shiite controlled government feels safe enough yet. He certainly isn’t worried about al qaeda or “terrorists”, just the Sunni “insurgents”. With the bogus debaathification law passed the minister knows he has good cause to be concerned. The old Iraqi army remains unemployed and unemployable as do thousands who worked in government during the time of Sadam and the US has armed most of them to fight al qaeda thinking that the Shiites would obtain political reconciliation…they are further away from reconciliation than ever. That’s why our military is needed… to help control the Sunnis, the sectarian cleansing is far from complete.

  • ***Racer-X and Hark*** Glad to see others are in tune with this concept. I’m going to quote from both of your comments. You are exactly right. It’s impossible for the press to frame anything in line with breaking away from oil dependence.
    It’s naive to think that our involvement in Iraq has anything what-so-ever to do with any comment this minister makes because we are not there for the Iraqis or their safety and security but totally for our own interests…oil. Bush is in the area trying to make a case for war with Iran. He’s decided to ignore the NIE because it just gets in the way of his plans. Iran isn’t big enough or suicidal enough to attack anyone and they are one of the only countries in that region without a nuclear weapon, so as with Iraq it’s all about the oil. So much murder and death over something we can break our dependence on yet it gets framed as a fight for democracy. Who do they think they are fooling?? It all comes down to impeachment to safe guard our freedom and protect our future. Ignoring all the warnings our elected dems are betting everything on the next election. So now is the time when Bush can run roughshod all over them knowing they will do nothing to stop them because it’s just too much trouble to deal with.

  • We’re basically all on the same wavelength here – the question could have been, “How long do you think it will take to get the oil law passed, and production-sharing agreements signed that will nail down the Iraqi oil industry for the greater glory of the United States of America, not to mention the usurious profit-taking of Big Oil?”, and the answer would be just about the same.

  • Ummmmm… guys (and gals)? It really doesn’t matter what we think about exactly when Iraq will be able to ‘defend’ themselves– we will have soldiers there for the foreseeable future, regardless of a red or blue Administration.

    This choice was made for us when our Saudi bases were quietly closed back in ’04 (or ’05– too lazy to look it up right now). Ever since Gulf War I, we had maintained a significant military presence in the Middle East, primarily centered in Saudi Arabia. The decision– for political reasons– to close those bases (not one I agree with– after all, I still contend we should have been invading Saudi to begin with– 16 of the 9/11 hijackers came from there…) means that the only significant military presence which we can maintain is in Iraq. Therefore, figure on, even if we reach a peace-time state in Iraq, us having 20-40K soldiers stationed there for the long term.

    So, ultimately, I think it’s kind of a moot point as to when the Iraqis will be able to defend themselves– we plan on being there for a very long time, regardless.

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