 [Daily Caller] Gen. David Petraeus, former U.S. force commander for Iraq and Afghanistan, said the maligned Iraqi security forces shouldn't be underestimated, despite their failure to prevent Islamic State extremists from capturing huge swaths of land.
The military failure was more a measure of "political meddling" by Baghdad, he said during a 9/11 memorial event in Denver. With a new government in place and with a strong guiding hand from U.S. military consultants, Petraeus said Iraq is well positioned to route ISIS forces from positions in Mosul and other areas they've overtaken.
He also said ISIS shouldn't be overestimated as to their abilities or the support they may have among local Sunni tribes. Al Qaeda in Iraq, the extremist group he helped defeat during the 2007 troop surge, had much deeper roots in the communities it controlled, he said, and presented a more daunting challenge than ISIS today.
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"It's not the kind of 'Iraq on fire, complete desperation' we had during the surge," he said.
But he also cautioned that routing ISIS from its areas of control in Iraq wouldn't be easy and he commended President Obama for making it clear during a national address Wednesday night that the effort could take years.
The difference between today's strategy in dealing with ISIS and the surge strategy of 2007, he said, is that "the Iraqis are going to do vastly more of this for themselves this time."
Describing himself as both nonpartisan and as a realist, Petraeus said he agreed with the general outlines of Obama's strategy for dealing with the terrorist threat in Iraq, calling the plan "doable." He said an equal challenge, if and when ISIS is neutralized in Iraq, will be deactivating the Shia militias that have formed to protect communities in and around Baghdad. 
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