The commandant of the Marine Corps warned Thursday that the US military needs more time to succeed in Iraq than the country is willing to give it despite incremental progress.
"You know, the bad guys' timeline's 100 years. Ours is probably somewhere short of two at this point," General James Conway told reporters. "And there is a tremendous disconnect."
Conway's comments come amid signs of differences between US commanders in Iraq and both their civilian leaders and an anxious Congress over how long the United States can afford to keep large numbers of troops in Iraq.
General Raymond Odierno, the number two commander in Iraq, said recently the surge in US forces needs to be sustained through April.
But US Defense Secretary Robert Gates last week insisted the strategy will be assessed in September and he held out the possibility that US forces could be drawn down at that point.
The Democratic controlled Congress, meanwhile, has been holding up funding for the war to pressure the White House to agree to a timetable for a troop withdrawal beginning as soon as October.
"The difference in the time we in uniform need for success in Iraq and the amount of time our countrymen are prepared to invest is a disconnect that's troubling," Conway said.
He pointed to progress in western al-Anbar province, a hotbed of the Sunni insurgency where some tribal leaders have recently turned against al-Qaeda extremists and joined forces with US troops.
The province was once considered the last in line to be turned over to Iraqi security forces because of the intensity of the insurgency, but Conway said that has changed with Sunnis joining the Iraqi army and police in large numbers.
US commanders will have to decide whether 4,000 additional marines that were supposed to deploy to the province as part of the surge will still be needed in Al-Anbar, he said.
Whether security for Al-Anbar can be turned over to Iraqis sooner is "very much an open question at this point, but I'm optimistic about all those things," Conway said.
Conway argued that a US failure in Iraq would damage US credibility and leave the world "a less safe place."
But he said insurgencies typically take nine to 10 years to defeat.
"I think there is less of an appetite in our country than we, the military, might think we need to sustain that kind of effort over that period of time. That's the basic disconnect that I was talking about," he said.
