It is hard as an American to support the failure of American military operations in Iraq. Such failure will bring with it the death and wounding of many American service members, and many more Iraqis.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
In the three years since our nation began operations in Iraq, more than 2,500 Americans have been killed and more than 18,000 Americans have been seriously wounded.
There's been a lot of disappointments with the Iraqi army, no doubt about that. Some units have performed well, especially their special operations units. But a lot of their units have not.
There is not a great sense that the Americans know what they are doing, or are making much progress in Iraq. And there is satisfaction in seeing that the Iraqis are successful in resisting the United States.
During the surge and in the years after the surge, Iraqi forces fought and died for their country at vastly higher numbers than did U.S. and coalition forces. We know that they can fight.
That is why we wholeheartedly support the American-led effort to free the people of Iraq. And though we are a small country with a small military, we are proud to stand side by side with our allies in the fight to end the reign of terror in Baghdad.
However one feels about the war in Iraq, realize that our troops deserve our support 100 percent.
In Iraq we must succeed. Failure is not an option.
The reality is that we have missed a lot of opportunities in Iraq because of a failed policy.
We need to continue our full support of the nascent Iraqi government by helping to rebuild their economic infrastructure and maintain security while training the Iraqi security forces.
We can't have a failure in Iraq, but we also can't be there for the next 10 years because if we are, it's going to become, I think, a failure in and of itself.