THE DANGER WILL COME FROM IRAQ NOT FROM AFGHANISTAN.
Mr. President
I have the unfortunate mission to tell you that you have made another mistake:
You seem to be satisfied and proud that the US will stop conducting combat missions in Iraq and that we are on a path to reduce significantly our presence in Iraq.
You should not be satisfied. Iraq is still a powder keg.
It is a powder keg in part because the Iraqi government has not been able to function since the last elections as they were not able to form a coalition majority, what is left is an assembly that was able to conduct the business of the Iraqi people for less than 20 minutes during the last 6 months, a world record of inefficiency. In addition Iran is ready to wreck havoc as soon as the American troops show weakness
I am more worried about Iraq than I am worried about Afghanistan. Afghanistan is on the road to recovery because it is a much simpler problem to solve and because the right approach has been designed by the Petreaus school of military philosophy. If the President has the willpower to stay the course the progress is going to be impressive.
Iraq has many big cities where multiple bombs can create horrifying carnage.
If the Americans do not retain their ability to conduct combat missions, the whole Iraqi country will crumble into chaos again and all the successes gained after the abominably incompetent and dangerous Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and Bush Junior were evicted from the chain of command are going to be lost.
There has been almost no American combat casualties in Iraq for the last twelve months. It is in my personal opinion one of the best benchmarks in defining the success of any American operation anywhere.
The Iraqi people themselves are afraid by the void that the withdrawal of the American soldiers will create knowing full well that their nation will return to Chaos with Iran flaming the fire of terrorism in Iraq.
Mister President please keep the actual combat latitude the American soldiers have in Iraq. It is your only way to Win the Iraq war ( winning means a relatively stable Iraq with less that 12 bomb attacks per year and less than 120 Iraqi civilians killed per year. -Extremely difficult to achieve-)
Hopefully the Iraqi people will ask you to give back the ability for the US soldiers to continue to assist Iraqi soldiers in Combat even if helping only with air support, artillery, intelligence and mission organization.
Respectfully yours
Eric Lafayette
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