U.S. Army Chief of Staff, Gen. Ray Odierno, talks to Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski during an interview on the MSNBC morning talk show, Morning Joe, in New York, June 12, 2015. Odierno was visiting New York the week in celebration of the Army's ...
U.S. Army Chief of Staff, Gen. Ray Odierno, cuts the cake with both the oldest and youngest Soldier present on Military Island, Times Square, New York, June 12, 2015. Odierno was visiting New York the week in celebration of the Army's 240th birthday,...
Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski listen as U.S. Army Chief of Staff, Gen. Ray Odierno, talks during an interview on the MSNBC morning talk show, Morning Joe, in New York, June 12, 2015. Odierno was visiting New York the week in celebration of the ...
U.S. Army Chief of Staff, Gen. Ray Odierno, poses with a Soldier after the U.S. Army Soldier Show on Military Island, Times Square, New York, June 12, 2015. Odierno was visiting New York the week in celebration of the Army's 240th birthday, which fal...
WASHINGTON (Army News Service, June 12, 2015) -- "We need the nations in the region to step up and be part of the solution [in Iraq]," said Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Ray Odierno.
"This can't be a U.S. problem only," he continued, "because if it is, you won't solve the problem."
The problem to which the chief referred is the Islamic State's advance into a large swath of western Iraq, inhabited mostly by Sunnis, and the fracturing of the Shia-Sunni-Kurdish alliances.
Odierno spoke on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," June 12, prior to visiting Times Square in Manhattan, for a 240th Army birthday celebration event. The Army chief of staff was joined on the TV show by retired Army Col. Jack Jacobs, an MSNBC military analyst who's also a Medal of Honor recipient and Vietnam War veteran.
That's not to say the U.S. doesn't have an important role to play, Odierno added, addressing Jacobs, host Joe Scarborough and co-hosts Mika Brzezinski and Willie Geist.
"We certainly need to be there to enable them and help them do that or we'll end up where we're at now," he said.
The Iraqi army is now, basically a Shia army with Kurdish forces in the north and "you have no Sunnis participating, and that's the fundamental problem," he said.
"So you now have an army that's not representative of all the groups. You've got to have a national army representing everyone," he said.
The strategy of the Iraqi army now and going forward, and the strategy the U.S. supports, Odierno said, is to get more Sunni involvement. To that end, emphasis is being placed on training Sunni fighters in bases to the west of Baghdad, where the Sunni population lives, and incorporating more of them into the Iraqi army.
That strategy is a step in getting Iraq back to the way it was "when we left in 2011," he said, when "we had a national army with leaders and soldiers who were Kurds, Shias and Sunnis."
U.S. ADVISORS
This week, the president ordered up to 450 more U.S. military personnel to train Iraqi soldiers.
Scarborough said there's concern from some politicians that that's "mission creep."
Odierno said he rejected that notion. "Rather, it's an expansion of the current policy of training additional Iraqi forces," Sunnis in particular.
"We're not going to fight this fight for them," he said. "They have to do this themselves, along with regional partners."
Odierno added that more advisors might be added later "if we think it's in our best interest to add to the Sunni" training mission.
Jacobs commented that it's important for politicians and the American public to keep the "long-term perspective" in mind.
"I'm mindful of the notion that everything takes much more time than you think it does. Things like this take decades," he added. "The real question is do we have the political will to do whatever we're going to undertake in the region?"
Jacobs said he agreed with the chief about more regional players needing to step up and assist the Iraqi army, but added that "more diplomacy needs to be directed to that end as well. The military instrument of power cannot always be the default instrument."
Odierno noted that he remembers Jacobs from his days as a cadet in the early 1970s at the U.S. Military Academy, West Point, New York, where Jacobs taught international relations.
Scarborough wished Odierno, Jacobs and all the Soldiers and former Soldiers a happy 240th birthday, noting their hard work and sacrifices: "The Army has done so much for this nation in its 240-year history, but a disproportionate burden has been put on the Army since 2003."
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