"We've got to ensure that the quality and the capability of these forces will be good enough to withstand the challenges that the insurgents and the terrorists will present to the new Iraqi government"
About this Quote
The survival of a fledgling state amid insurgency hinges less on troop counts than on whether its security forces can fight, adapt, and earn public trust. John Abizaid, a four-star general who led U.S. Central Command during the most volatile years of the Iraq War, points directly to that standard. After the 2003 invasion and the dissolution of Saddam Husseins military, Iraq confronted a multi-front insurgency: Baathist remnants, nationalists, Al-Qaeda in Iraq, and sectarian militias. Their strategy was to delegitimize the new government by making daily governance impossible, sowing fear through IEDs, assassinations, and spectacular attacks. Against such threats, capability is not a single metric but a system.
Quality in this context means vetted recruits, competent leadership, reliable logistics, interoperable command and control, intelligence networks that can map clandestine cells, and units trained to protect civilians while respecting the rule of law. It also means resilience against infiltration and sectarian capture. A police force seen as a militia in uniform, or an army unit that abuses detainees, does the insurgents work by alienating the population. Counterinsurgency demands that local forces be both effective and legitimate, able to secure neighborhoods and win cooperation that foreign troops cannot.
Abizaids emphasis reflects a strategic tension of the mid-2000s: pressure to hand off security quickly versus the risk of fielding hollow forces. Creating an army and police while under fire is not just a technical task; it is political state-building. Training schedules, equipment deliveries, and doctrinal manuals matter, but so do inclusive recruitment, judicial oversight, and the slow cultivation of public confidence.
The line captures a hard-earned lesson: durable stability comes from indigenous institutions that can withstand shocks without undermining the very government they serve. Without that quality and capability, the new Iraqi state would remain a target, its sovereignty contingent on outside support and its future perpetually uncertain.
Quality in this context means vetted recruits, competent leadership, reliable logistics, interoperable command and control, intelligence networks that can map clandestine cells, and units trained to protect civilians while respecting the rule of law. It also means resilience against infiltration and sectarian capture. A police force seen as a militia in uniform, or an army unit that abuses detainees, does the insurgents work by alienating the population. Counterinsurgency demands that local forces be both effective and legitimate, able to secure neighborhoods and win cooperation that foreign troops cannot.
Abizaids emphasis reflects a strategic tension of the mid-2000s: pressure to hand off security quickly versus the risk of fielding hollow forces. Creating an army and police while under fire is not just a technical task; it is political state-building. Training schedules, equipment deliveries, and doctrinal manuals matter, but so do inclusive recruitment, judicial oversight, and the slow cultivation of public confidence.
The line captures a hard-earned lesson: durable stability comes from indigenous institutions that can withstand shocks without undermining the very government they serve. Without that quality and capability, the new Iraqi state would remain a target, its sovereignty contingent on outside support and its future perpetually uncertain.
Quote Details
| Topic | War |
|---|
More Quotes by John
Add to List
