WASHINGTON, Sept 11: There will be no single point in time when America can claim victory in Iraq, the US envoy to Baghdad told a Senate panel on Tuesday.
Speaking on a second day of testimony on Capitol Hill, Ambassador Ryan Crocker told US lawmakers that victory can only be determined in the future.
“There will be no single moment at which we can claim victory. Any turning point will likely only be recognised in retrospect. This is a sober assessment, but it should not be a disheartening one,” Mr Crocker said.
Senator Joe Biden, who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, agreed with the ambassador but went a step ahead to declare that there cannot be a military victory in Iraq. “The one thing virtually everyone now agrees on is that there is no purely military solution in Iraq,” he said. “Lasting stability requires a political settlement among the Sunnis, the Shias and the Kurds,” he said.
Ambassador Crocker and Gen David Petraeus, the top US commander in Iraq, stressed that more work needs to be done but to quit now would ensure defeat.
The primary concern of senators participating in the debate was whether it is right to ask US soldiers to continue to die for Iraq, especially when all agree that there’s no military solution to this dispute.
On Tuesday, Gen Petraeus repeated his announcement that he plans to order home one Marine unit from Iraq at month’s end and another Army brigade in mid-December. Gen Petraeus also predicted a drawdown of US troops in Iraq by next summer to pre-surge levels, but he would not offer numbers beyond July. He said the total number of troops to be withdrawn by next summer — one Marine expeditionary unit, two Marine battalions and five Army brigades in all — was a “substantial” withdrawal.
But the numbers didn’t satisfy many Democratic lawmakers, on either side of Capitol Hill.
“We should not be asking any more American troops to sacrifice their lives and limbs for Iraqi politicians who refuse to compromise. That’s why I believe more strongly than ever that we need to change course in Iraq,” said Senator John Kerry, the former Democratic candidate for president.
“We’ve heard a lot today about America’s credibility. President Bush recently stated we should not have withdrawn our troops from Vietnam because of the great damage to America’s credibility,” said Congressman Robert Wexler of Florida.
AFP adds: Mr Crocker’s rhetoric has been a long remove from the White House’s triumphalist past declarations about remaking Iraq into a bastion of democracy in a restive, oil-rich region.
“I think in the past we have set some expectations that simply couldn’t be met,” he said.
US lawmakers should not look to short-term benchmarks for progress in Iraq, Mr Crocker said, estimating that just to provide adequate electricity throughout the country will take $25 billion up to 2016.
“So, again, it is not simply an issue of a government and a leadership that is dithering, incapable, unwilling,” the envoy told US senators.
