The war in
Iraq
is in its fifth year, and continues to impact stability
throughout the Middle East.
Susan Rice says it’s clear the conflict is fueled and complicated by the many competing interests fighting for control of the desert nation.
"We need to recognize that the fundamental aspect has been missing from our debate and our dialogue. I think we're, frankly, missing the forest for the trees. And I'd like to suggest that we step back and consider what's at stake here.
"Not only is the surge not working, as Phil said, to achieve its intended and stated objective of giving the Iraqi political factions the space that is necessary to resolve their political differences, we have a fundamental disconnect between our military strategy on the one hand and the realities on the ground in Iraq on the other. There is more than one war happening simultaneously in Iraq.
"Yes, we have an insurgency. We have Al Qaeda, and there is a counterinsurgency challenge. But there is also, separately and simultaneously, a raging sectarian civil war. The strategy that we are applying is potentially relevant to one aspect, the insurgency, and it's completely irrelevant to the civil war.
"The surge is not a policy, it's not a strategy; it's a counterinsurgency tactic, and it's a tactic designed to protect civilians. In the context of an insurgency, we know who the bad guys are, we know who the good guys are, and a counterinsurgency strategy is designed to bolster the legitimate authorities against the illegitimate insurgents. . .
". . . One of the most uniform and compelling lessons out of the research on civil conflict is that when you have an economic circumstance in which per capita income is declining, unemployment is rising, the economic opportunities are more and more limited for people at the individual level. You have further fuel on the fire for conflict. These factors are demonstrably shown to be not only factors that increase the likelihood of civil conflict arising in the first instance but factors that perpetuate civil conflicts once it's broken out."