Editorial: We may be in Iraq for years

Friday, May 20, 2005 | 8:54 a.m.

Last week 1,000 U.S. Marines in Iraq attacked enemy insurgents along the border with Syria. The mission was not entirely successful, even though 125 enemy fighters were killed. Many of the enemy escaped by slipping across the border or slinking back into the interior of Iraq, there to explode more bombs and engage in other terrorism to weaken the Iraqi people's faith in their new government. The Marines are not at fault for the escapes. They fought well and lost 14 of their own in doing so. The problem was that not a single Iraqi soldier participated in the mission.

President Bush and our military planners pinned their stated visions of a free Iraq on being able to train a new Iraqi army and new police forces. But they failed to anticipate the amount of internal terrorism our troops would encounter after toppling Saddam Hussein. They're finding out now that it's impossible to recruit enough soldiers and police officers in a country where volunteers for those vital positions are immediately targeted for death.

In a lengthy story in the New York Times on Thursday, U.S. military commanders were reported to be grim in assessing the outlook for security in Iraq without continued heavy U.S. presence. Gen. John P. Abizaid, who commands U.S. forces in the Middle East, said at a Washington briefing that there has been disappointing progress in developing enough Iraqi troops to mount effective campaigns against the terrorists, the newspaper reported. Additionally, the paper reported on interviews with other top U.S. commanders in Iraq and Washington. They were candid about the long road ahead. One of them was quoted as saying U.S. involvement in Iraq could last "many years."

Stepped-up car bombings -- 126 since March, one officer told the Times -- are indicative of that long road. Whether we should have started the war in the first place is debatable. But unless we want to endanger all of the brave voters who created Iraq's new government, and watch as that government -- for which so many of our troops died -- is swarmed by murderous fanatics, we must now stay for those many years if necessary. A sobering thought, but true.