Is Iraq’s Military Good Enough for US Troops to Leave? – By Katie Bo Williams (Defense One) / Oct 28 2020
After 17 years of fighting Saddam, AQ, and ISIS, officials say support for Baghdad and its security forces remains key to fending off Iran
The goal was simple: Prepare Iraqi security forces to take the lead in defeating terrorists, so that the United States wouldn’t have to.
President George W. Bush laid it out in a 2004 speech on American strategy. Iraq’s military and other security forces “must be the primary defenders of Iraqi security as American and coalition forces are withdrawn,” he said.
Almost two decades later, the mission remains just as simple — and elusive.
“Our goal is to keep ISIS at a level where ultimately they’ll be able to be handled by local security elements with minimal assistance from any other entity — to include external entities like the coalition, NATO, or us,” Gen. Frank McKenzie, the head of U.S. Central Command, which runs American military operations across the Middle East, told a small group of reporters in September. “We’re a little ways away from that now, but we’re certainly a lot closer than we were two or three years ago to realizing that goal.”
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