The war in Iraq will be won when Iraqis take ownership of their destiny but it cannot be won militarily by the United States, the chief of staff of the US Army said Tuesday.General Peter Schoomaker said "the power of information" and how the conflict is portrayed and perceived also has a major impact on the outcome.
"This war that we're in cannot be won militarily," he told defense reporters here.
He said US forces are doing better than media coverage would suggest and they are gaining valuable experience in fighting the kind of asymmetrical adversaries that the United States is likely to face in the future.
But he noted that national power consists of the diplomatic, informational, military and economic.
"Military -- the "m" in the dime -- will not win this," he said. "This will be won at the informational level and at the economic level, with the support of the military for security, and diplomatically."
"This is a tug between whether or not nation states, rule of law, civilization are going to succeed over everything that is the reverse of that. It really is a clash of ideas," he said.
"And this notion of how people are informed, what they think, and how it's described is a very powerful piece of this deal," he said.
"So are we winning? Well, we're not going to win it militarily. We are going to win it when Iraqis take ownership," he said.
How they do that "will not be exactly consistent with Jeffersonian democracy," he said.
But he said it offers "an extraordinary opportunity to have a different Middle East."
All rights reserved. Copyright 2003 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.
Quick Links
SpaceWar
Search SpaceWar
Subscribe To SpaceWar Express
