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Marine General: “We are Winning”
This is a great interview with Lt. Gen. James Mattis from Camp Pendleton. He just returned from another trip to Iraq and had this to say:
The increasing Sunni tribal cooperation with U.S. troops in Iraq’s Anbar province has al-Qaida-linked insurgents on the run, Mattis said. “I caution people that this is not irreversible,” he said. “But at the same time, we are winning and the enemy is losing.”
Mattis’ comments were echoed by Marine Brig. Gen. John Allen, deputy commander of U.S. forces in Anbar, who said Wednesday that insurgents have been pushed out of highly populated areas.
The general pointed out that while progress has been made in Iraq and Afghanistan, there is much left to do to defeat the extremist threats to Middle East stability and long-term U.S. security.
“The problem of violent extremists existed long before 2003, and it is going to exist long after the next presidential election,” said Mattis, who also commands Camp Pendleton’s 25,000-member I Marine Expeditionary Force. “We are going to have to confront it . . . .”
In other words, George W. Bush did not invent Islamic terrorism and we will have to continue to battle it long after he leaves office. Saying we just need to “end” this war is not a policy. We can end this war only by winning it.
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