"But the key shift in focus will be from counter-insurgency operations to more and more cooperation with Iraqi security forces and to building Iraqi security capacity"
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“Key shift” is Pentagon-speak for trying to reframe a war without admitting it’s stuck. Abizaid’s line performs a delicate rhetorical pivot: it keeps the U.S. in the driver’s seat while insisting the driver is handing over the keys. The phrasing is managerial, almost soothing, designed to make a messy strategic recalibration sound like an orderly project plan.
The intent is twofold. First, it signals a move away from the most politically toxic word in the Iraq vocabulary at the time: counter-insurgency, which implies an enduring, intimate entanglement with local politics and civilian life. Second, it sells “cooperation” and “building capacity” as a cleaner, more sustainable mission - one that can be measured, briefed, and eventually declared successful. “More and more” does crucial work here: it promises momentum without committing to a timetable. It’s change as an asymptote.
The subtext is accountability management. If Iraqi forces can be presented as improving, the U.S. can justify redeployment, reduce casualties, and shift responsibility for outcomes onto Iraqi institutions. If things deteriorate, the same language can be flipped: capacity wasn’t built fast enough; cooperation wasn’t reciprocated. The sentence quietly prepares that escape hatch.
Context matters: Abizaid, as a senior commander in the Iraq era, is speaking into a domestic audience exhausted by open-ended war and a policy apparatus searching for an exit narrative that doesn’t sound like retreat. It’s not poetry; it’s strategic messaging - competence, inevitability, and transition packaged in a single, carefully damped sentence.
The intent is twofold. First, it signals a move away from the most politically toxic word in the Iraq vocabulary at the time: counter-insurgency, which implies an enduring, intimate entanglement with local politics and civilian life. Second, it sells “cooperation” and “building capacity” as a cleaner, more sustainable mission - one that can be measured, briefed, and eventually declared successful. “More and more” does crucial work here: it promises momentum without committing to a timetable. It’s change as an asymptote.
The subtext is accountability management. If Iraqi forces can be presented as improving, the U.S. can justify redeployment, reduce casualties, and shift responsibility for outcomes onto Iraqi institutions. If things deteriorate, the same language can be flipped: capacity wasn’t built fast enough; cooperation wasn’t reciprocated. The sentence quietly prepares that escape hatch.
Context matters: Abizaid, as a senior commander in the Iraq era, is speaking into a domestic audience exhausted by open-ended war and a policy apparatus searching for an exit narrative that doesn’t sound like retreat. It’s not poetry; it’s strategic messaging - competence, inevitability, and transition packaged in a single, carefully damped sentence.
Quote Details
| Topic | War |
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