But we shouldn't risk our gains made at the price of blood and treasure by failing to invest the relatively trivial amount of money and effort we need to spend to cement our gains:
Those residual forces are far less important to America’s long-term relationship with Iraq than the nature of the emerging civilian and political relationship. But even as that relationship is being forged, Congress has slashed $500 million from the budgetary request for the continuing civilian mission in Iraq – which will provide the foundation for our long-term strategic relationship – leaving a shortfall of more than $1 billion.
Really? After the lesson of slashing civilian spending in Afghanistan after we drove the Soviets from that place?
Because if we fail to help the Iraqis on the civilian side, we could see a military threat rise from the ashes:
Intelligence officials say foreign fighters have been slipping back into Iraq in larger numbers recently and may have been behind some of the most devastating attacks this year, reviving a threat the U.S. military believed had been almost entirely eradicated.
They're coming in through Syria, although don't imagine that it is just Syria's fault:
A classified memo sent by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton last December made it clear that residents of Saudi Arabia and its neighbors were the chief supporters of many extremist activities, the newspaper said.
"It has been an ongoing challenge to persuade Saudi officials to treat terrorist financing emanating from Saudi Arabia as a strategic priority," according to the cable cited by the newspaper.
It concluded that "donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide" and offered similarly critical views about other countries in the region.
We won a battle in Iraq, but the war against Islamo-fascism must continue until we win. If we don't wage that war--and don't pretend it is some less-than-dangerous vague battle against man-caused disasters--we could lose on the same battlefield we won.
Until that large war is won, we will fight other battles. One battle could be an attempt to reverse our battlefield victory in Iraq before we can cement it and exploit it. I worry that the combination of jihadis coming in from Syria again and Iranian infiltration of Iraq from the east means that our enemy in Tehran (with their client state Syria following orders) will yet try to pull off a Tet offensive in Iraq to break our will to complete our victory in Iraq and drive us to come home even though the war isn't over, over there.
