WASHINGTON, June 15: The war in Iraq will be won when Iraqis take ownership of their destiny but it cannot be won militarily by the United States, the chief of staff of the US Army said on Tuesday.
Gen Peter Schoomaker said "the power of information" and how the conflict is portrayed and perceived also has a major impact on the outcome. "This war that we're in cannot be won militarily," he told defence reporters here.
He said US forces are doing better than media coverage would suggest and they are gaining valuable experience in fighting the kind of asymmetrical adversaries that the United States is likely to face in the future.
But he noted that national power consists of the diplomatic, informational, military and economic. "Military - the "m" in the dime - will not win this," he said. "This will be won at the informational level and at the economic level, with the support of the military for security, and diplomatically."
"This is a tug between whether or not nation states, rule of law, civilization are going to succeed over everything that is the reverse of that. It really is a clash of ideas," he said.
"And this notion of how people are informed, what they think, and how it's described is a very powerful piece of this deal," he said. "So are we winning? Well, we're not going to win it militarily. We are going to win it when Iraqis take ownership," he said.
How they do that "will not be exactly consistent with Jeffersonian democracy", he said. But he said it offers "an extraordinary opportunity to have a different Middle East."
JORDAN NOT TO SEND TROOPS: Jordan rejects suggestions it should send troops to Iraq and opposes the deployment there of any military forces from other Iraqi neighbours, Jordan's Justice Minister Saleh Bashir said here on Tuesday.
Jordan "will not send forces to Iraq", Mr Bashir said on the second day of the meeting of foreign ministers from the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC), a grouping of 57 Muslim countries.
"We will not send any soldiers to Iraq and we are against the presence of military forces from neighbouring countries in Iraq," added Bashir, who heads the Jordanian delegation to the Istanbul meeting.
Bashir was responding to comments by NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer that Arab states should take part in a multinational force in the war-torn country, alongside NATO forces.
"If on the basis of the UN Security Council resolution the government in Baghdad asks NATO to play a role, we are not going to shut the door in its face. That would not be correct," de Scheffer said in an interview published in Wednesday's edition of the French newspaper Le Monde.
Delegates from the other neighbours of Iraq - Iran, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Turkey - also said there had always been an understanding none of Iraq's neighbours would send soldiers there.
An Arab minister said Iraq was categorically opposed to allowing forces from neighbouring countries onto its soil, but could allow soldiers from other Arab countries to serve in a multinational peacekeeping force alongside NATO soldiers. "If some Arab countries want to participate in a such a force, they can as long as they are not neighbours of Iraq," the minister said. -AFP
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