Battle in Iraq to Continue for Years

Those with very short attention spans and who frighten easily aren't going to like this news, but they should prepare for a long, difficult battle ahead in Iraq, political pressures be damned.

U.S. likely to fight insurgents for years

The fight against insurgents in Iraq is likely to continue several more years, the top U.S. commander in Iraq said yesterday.

"I think just about everybody out there recognizes that a situation like this -- with the many, many challenges that Iraq is contending with -- is not one that's going to be resolved in a year or even two years," Army Gen. David H. Petraeus said on "Fox News Sunday." "And in fact, typically, I think historically, counterinsurgency operations have gone at least nine or 10 years."

The general said he would be able to "provide a reasonable snapshot of the situation" by September and sounded a hopeful note that the "surge" of additional U.S. troops in Iraq would produce results.

"I think that there is a good prospect for progress in the months ahead that, hopefully, can be matched by progress in the political and economic arenas here in Iraq and, again, can give us hope for the way ahead," he said. He added that it was too early to tell whether the increased level of U.S. troops would need to be maintained into next year.

"We will provide some recommendations on the way ahead" by September, he said.

Several U.S. leaders have made the analogy in recent weeks to the continuing American military presence in South Korea, now more than a half-century after the Korean fighting ended in a cease-fire. Gen. Petraeus said that such a commitment would be for politicians to decide but that a long-term security arrangement is "probably a fairly realistic assessment" of what would be needed militarily.

The general's optimistic assessment in the short term was bolstered by Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, who said the situation there is "a mixed picture, but certainly not by any means a hopeless one" and cautioned against impatience.

Our enemies clearly understand the unwillingness of the left to do what's necessary in our fight against terrorists both inside and outside of Iraq, and are aided by a compliant media in distorting the reality of what we face. The Korean analogy, while an entirely different circumstance, is worth noting since many people with a lack of historical context fail to understand you cannot just pick up and leave a war zone and expect he enemy to lay down his arms and embrace democracy.

Life just isn't that simple.