Mullen: Time for Iraqi leaders to step up - Army News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Army Times

Mullen: Time for Iraqi leaders to step up

With the U.S. military presence in Iraq now slowly beginning to shrink, the time has come for Iraqi leaders to take advantage of the security improvements wrought by this year’s U.S. troop surge to pass key legislation needed to unify the country, America’s top military officer said today.

“I think the Iraqi leaders need to seize the moment,” said Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in a meeting with Military Times editors and reporters in Springfield, Va.

Iraqi political leaders need to realize “that this window of opportunity — I’ve had this discussion, actually, with the leadership there — is finite, and that they need to take advantage of it,” Mullen said.

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Read the full transcript of Military Times’ interview with Adm. Mullen

President Bush in September announced plans to bring 5,700 troops home by Christmas, and a total of 21,500 troops — all together, roughly equivalent to the number of additional troops sent to Iraq this year — by July.

Bush’s top commander in Iraq, Army Gen. David Petraeus, said additional force reductions “will continue” beyond that point, but added that he won’t make any further recommendations until about mid-March.

Bush said his plans are contingent on continued improvements in Iraq. “The more successful we are, the more American troops can return home,” he said.

But analysts say slowing or halting a troop reduction would have a devastating effect on an already strained U.S. military, particularly its ground forces.

Mullen said he is convinced the surge has reversed the terrorist and sectarian violence that has plagued Iraq since the U.S. invaded in 2003 and that peaked in February 2006, when a venerated Shi’ite shrine in Samarra was destroyed.

“The surge has created a very, very positive change in the security environment over the last many months,” said Mullen, who visited Iraq during his first week as Joint Chiefs chairman in October. “And that has created a window of opportunity for the government of Iraq, for the economy of Iraq.

“That doesn’t mean it’s not a dangerous country, that doesn’t mean al-Qaida’s gone, that doesn’t mean that Baghdad isn’t a violent city,” Mullen said. “But every statistic that I’ve seen with respect to violence [is] just enormously better. So I’m cautiously optimistic, from that standpoint.”

But he leavened that view by paraphrasing the September congressional testimony of Petraeus.

“There are a lot of events that will happen over the next six months that are difficult to predict,” Mullen said. “And those events ... have the potential to drive it in one direction or another. We just don’t know what those will be. The signs are good. But I think it’s way too early to say that we clearly don’t have a lot of work to do or there aren’t many challenges. There really are.”

Mullen said his sense of improved security, borne out by Multi-National Force-Iraq statistics, was reinforced Monday during conversations with Marine Corps Gen. James Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James Conway, and Adm. William Fallon, chief of U.S. Central Command.

Cartwright and Conway visited Iraq during the Thanksgiving holiday week, while Fallon returned just yesterday from the Middle East.

“All three of them talked about the continued progress, even from when I was there in October,” Mullen noted.

He said some of those improvements stemmed from unexpected developments such as the efforts of so-called Concerned Local Citizens — essentially, neighborhood watch groups who officials say have worked to “take back” their towns and villages from al-Qaida and other extremists. And local government re-organization and sectarian reconciliation has in some cases had a positive impact on the central government, he said.

“The local political reconciliation is not exclusively local,” Mullen said. “There have actually been some engagements from the provinces back to the central government. And I think that’s an important construct as well.”

But Mullen acknowledged the central government’s failure to pass the big-ticket legislation considered crucial to firming up the central government.

“All of us are frustrated with the pace of political reconciliation at the central, senior level,” Mullen said. “And we have stated that in as many ways as we possibly can. And it continues to be a concern.”

Mullen said he sees “some progress” in passing some legislation. But the “big ones” — the sharing of hydrocarbon revenues and bringing former Saddam Hussein loyalists back into the government in an effort to promote national unity, for example — remain unresolved.

“I know that Ambassador [Ryan] Crocker and others are working this very, very hard with the senior leaders there,” Mullen said. “But in the end, it’s going to be up to the senior political leadership in Iraq to take advantage of this window of opportunity.”

At this point, the U.S. can only continue expending “a lot of effort continuing to work that whole issue very, very hard,” Mullen said. “And I think we need to continue to do that. There isn’t an easy answer.”

DISCUSS: The interview