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We Asked Gen. Petraeus Whether the Iraq War Was Really Worth It
[MIL.com] This article by Jeff Schogol originally appeared on Task & Purpose, a digital news and culture publication dedicated to military and veterans issues.

Fifteen years of war have turned Iraqi cities such as Ramadi, Fallujah, and Mosul into ruins. Iraq remains as divided as ever along sectarian lines, despite the deaths of more than 4,500 U.S. troops and untold numbers of Iraqis.

U.S. troops remain in Iraq to help advise and assist Iraqi forces as they try to prevent ISIS from launching yet another insurgency. Meanwhile, Iran has flooded the country with thousands of proxy fighters, giving it a large say in what the government of Iraq does post-ISIS.

This wasn’t the Iraq that was supposed to emerge when U.S. troops crossed the berm from Kuwait to Iraq in March 2003. Nor is this the Iraq that troops who trounced al Qaeda during the surge bled for. There are few tangible signs of success, and Iraq’s future is still unclear.

Seeing all this chaos prompts many Iraq veterans to wonder: Was what they fought for worth the sacrifices they made?

We posed that question to the Iraq War’s most influential figure, retired Army Gen. David Petraeus, who led U.S. forces in Iraq during the 2007-2008 surge in an attempt to stop a Sunni-Shiite civil war.

"I think everybody who was in Iraq, who served there, who knows the sacrifice it entails, who knows the cost in blood and in treasure... has been frustrated to see how the country slid back after we left in late 2011," Petraeus said in an exclusive interview. "But at the end of the day, I think we also have a degree of quiet pride that when our country needed us, we answered the call."

The "truly remarkable Americans" who joined the military after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks knew that their country would send them to war, said Petraeus, who added that it was an incredible privilege for him to lead U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Posted by: Besoeker 2018-03-19
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=510546