News from the front

Anthony Cordesman, the respected US military expert, has an important piece in the Washington Post today on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. As he reports, both conflicts are at a critical moment:

“No one can return from the battlefields in Iraq and Afghanistan, as I recently did, without believing that these are wars that can still be won. They are also clearly wars that can still be lost”.

Cordesman is more optimistic about the situation in Iraq than Afghanistan, but he argues that neither conflict will end anytime soon. 

“What the situations in Iraq and Afghanistan have in common is that it will take a major and consistent U.S. effort throughout the next administration at least to win either war.”

To my mind, this fact is the compelling reason to hope that John McCain wins in November. He is the only presidential candidate who has both grasped this reality and is prepared to make the commitments that will be necessary if the United States and its allies are to give themselves a chance of winning these conflicts.