On Monday, DT posted a detailed after action report from the influ­en­tial and thought­ful for­mer Army gen­eral and SouthCom com­man­der Barry McCaffrey on his mid-​​February visit to Afghanistan.

We now have the report he com­plied on his mid-​​March visit to Iraq. Media reports have focused on the com­ments por­tend­ing dis­as­ter in Iraq and jus­ti­fi­ably so. But theres also some hope­ful signs, par­tic­u­larly as coun­terin­sur­gency guru Gen. David Petraeus moves for­ward with his strat­egy to give the Iraqi gov­ern­ment breath­ing room to forge compromises.

McCaffrey also makes some inter­est­ing points on cer­tain U.S. capa­bil­i­ties that are worth a sec­ond look 

(Download entire report)

From the report

Iraq is ripped by a low grade civil war which has wors­ened to cat­a­strophic lev­els with as many as 3000 cit­i­zens mur­dered per month. The pop­u­la­tion is in despair. Life in many of the urban areas is now desperate.

There is no func­tion of gov­ern­ment that oper­ates effec­tively across the nation— not health care, not jus­tice, not edu­ca­tion, not trans­porta­tion, not labor and com­merce, not elec­tric­ity, not oil pro­duc­tion. There is no province in the coun­try in which the gov­ern­ment has dominance.

US domes­tic sup­port for the war in Iraq has evap­o­rated and will not return. The great major­ity of the coun­try thinks the war was a mis­take. The US Congress now has a cen­tral focus on con­strain­ing the Administration use of mil­i­tary power in Iraq —and poten­tially Iran.

In sum­mary, the US Armed Forces are in a posi­tion of strate­gic peril. A dis­as­ter in Iraq will in all like­li­hood result in a widened regional strug­gle which will endan­ger Americas strate­gic inter­ests (oil) in the Mid-​​east for a gen­er­a­tion. We will also pro­duce another gen­er­a­tion of sol­diers who lack con­fi­dence in their American politi­cians, the media, and their own senior mil­i­tary leadership.

But

Since the arrival of General David Petraeus in com­mand of Multi-​​National Force Iraq— the sit­u­a­tion on the ground has clearly and mea­sur­ably improved.

There is a real and grow­ing ground swell of Sunni tribal oppo­si­tion to the Al Qaeda-​​in-​​Iraq ter­ror for­ma­tions. (90% Iraqi.) This counter-​​Al Qaeda move­ment in Anbar Province was fos­tered by bril­liant US Marine lead­er­ship. There is now unmis­tak­able evi­dence that the west­ern Sunni tribes are increas­ingly con­vinced that they blun­dered badly by sit­ting out the polit­i­cal process.

Reconciliation of the inter­nal war­ring ele­ments in Iraq will be how we even­tu­ally win the war in Iraq—if it hap­pens. There is a very sophis­ti­cated and care­fully inte­grated approach by the Iraqi gov­ern­ment and Coalition actors to defuse the armed vio­lence from inter­nal ene­mies and bring peo­ple into the polit­i­cal process. There are encour­ag­ing signs that the peace and par­tic­i­pa­tion mes­sage does res­onate with many of the more mod­er­ate Sunni and Shia war­ring factions.

The com­mand and con­trol tech­nol­ogy, train­ing, con­trac­tor sup­port, and flex­i­bil­ity of Marine and Army com­bat for­ma­tions are magnificent.

The US Tier One spe­cial oper­a­tions capa­bil­ity is sim­ply magic. They are deadly in get­ting their tar­getwith nor­mally zero col­lat­eral dam­age­and with min­i­mal friendly losses or injuries. Some of these assault ele­ments have done 200–300 take­down oper­a­tions at pla­toon level. The com­pre­hen­sive intel­li­gence sys­tem is phe­nom­e­nal. We need to re-​​think how we view these forces. They are a national strate­gic sys­tem akin to a B1 bomber.

In Sum

In my judg­ment, we can still achieve our objec­tive of: a sta­ble Iraq, at peace with its neigh­bors, not pro­duc­ing weapons of mass destruc­tion, and fully com­mit­ted to a law-​​based gov­ern­ment. The courage and strength of the US Armed Forces still gives us lat­i­tude and time to build the eco­nomic and polit­i­cal con­di­tions that might defuse the ongo­ing civil war. Our cen­tral pur­pose is to allow the nation to re-​​establish gov­er­nance based on some loose fed­eral con­sen­sus among the three major ethnic-​​factional actors.

– Christian