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3/14/2013 10:06:26 PM
16
"U.S. will not put boots-on-the-ground in another theater for 20 years"
[quote] [b]John Allen, observing that the U.S. will not put boots-on-the-ground in another theater for 20 years:[/b] "Clearly a 50-nation coalition right now in Afghanistan has been important to us, but my guess is... that it will be 20 years before we undertake something like this again. It's going to be a long time before NATO is going to be interested probably in undertaking something that could look like this again."[/quote]
[quote][b]Hadley, on al Qaeda in Iraq and the justification for war:[/b] "You know, Stan McChrystal's book is very interesting because it makes crystal clear that what Iraq became was a struggle against al Qaeda in Iraq. And I remember in the summer -- and I'm not getting partisan here -- I remember in the summer of 2008 when President Obama, then candidate Obama, said al Qaeda was the ball, the Bush administration took their eye off the ball, and they went into Iraq, but al Qaeda isn't in Iraq, al Qaeda is in Afghanistan. And I asked Mike McConnell at the time -- the DC at the time -- ‘How many al Qaeda fighters are in Afghanistan today and how many are in Iraq?' And he said, ‘In Iraq, there's about 15,000, down from about 20 [thousand], and in Afghanistan there's 200.' So you can say we failed to foresee that Iraq would become the frontline of al Qaeda's struggle against the United States, and I think we did not have the right strategy or the right resourcing in the end of the day to deal with that problem.."[/quote]
Do you think this is good news because of increased stability in the Middle East, or is it due to a country sick of 25 years of on/off war?
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I think what they're saying is a full scale invasion wont happen for at least another 20 year, an invasion like we did in Afghanistan and Iraq. With AQ gaining ground in Syria and in Africa, it'll be hard for us not to at least utilize our special operations forces in conjunction with the CIA and drones to minimize their threat. With Islamic extremism growing in places like Nigeria, Tanzania, Mali, and the Sinai (with it already being rampant in Algeria, Somalia, Sudan, and Libya), we cannot afford to "forget" about this growing problem. Not only is Africa a growing concern due to Islamic extremists, but al-Qaeda in Iraq is making a comeback not only in their home country, but also in Syria (al-Nusra Front [i]is[/i] AQI). Then you also have al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which is still our biggest terrorist threat. To put it short, the United States will always be interested and involved in the Middle East and North/Sub Saharan Africa. To reiterate, "boots on the ground" more than likely refers to invasions; not covert operations, like what will continue to happen.
