Decoding the McCaffrey Memo

If this is the cost of victory in Iraq, is America willing to pay it?

By Fred Kaplan
Updated Wednesday, May 3, 2006, at 6:12 PM ET

Good news and bad news on the war in Iraq: The good news is that victory is possible, our troops are the best ever, the Iraqi army is getting bigger and better, and most Iraqi people want a pluralistic government. The bad news is that it will take 10 more years to accomplish these successes—at least three years just to get the Iraqi military into shape.

This is the prognosis of a private seven-page memo that retired Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey wrote to the heads of the social science department at West Point, where he now teaches international relations. He wrote the memo—which has started to circulate on the Internet—after a weeklong fact-finding tour of Iraq and Kuwait, where he talked with more than a dozen top generals and received two dozen briefings at all levels, from ambassadors and commanders to grunts.