Abizad: Iraq war 'defining conflict of generation'
America’s top soldier in Iraq said the war and the wider battle against extremists in the Middle East was the defining conflict of the generation, and one from which the United States and its allies could not afford to walk away.
General John Abizaid likened the 21st-century battle against extremists to the great ideological and political clashes of the previous century.
“Think of it as a chance to confront fascism in 1920, if we had only had the guts to do it,” Abizaid told a Harvard University forum in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
As difficult as the war in Iraq was at the moment, Abizaid said the US had little choice but to try to find a way to help Iraqis defeat militants and quell increasing sectarian violence and private militias.
“It’s too soon to say we have failed,” he said. “We can’t keep talking about it as if it’s a disaster or a failure.”
Despite the sobering realities, Abizaid said there was reason to believe that the situation in Iraq would ultimately stabilise. He said extremists in the region, including Osama bin Laden and al Qaida, had yet to go “mainstream”.
But he said the challenges were daunting, including moving the Arab-Israeli peace process forward and containing Iran’s “destabilising role in the region”. In Iraq, he said, there must be progress against sectarian violence in the next six months.
He acknowledged that military action was only part of an overall solution and that force alone could never bring about a stable Iraq. The best the military could do in places like Iraq and Afghanistan was buy enough time to allow local, stable institutions of power to take root, he said.
Abizaid also suggested that soldiers on the front line were more hopeful of a good outcome than the American public, according to some polls, a disconnect he blamed in part on the “24/7 news cycle” that he said tended to highlight the latest bombings or kidnappings.
“If I think it was hopeless I would tell you,” he said. “It’s hard. It’s tough. We can do this.”
Abizaid made his comments at a forum at Harvard’s John F Kennedy School of Government. Abizaid received a masters degree in Middle East Affairs from the university in 1981.
