Dempsey: Syria A 10-year Issue

Local Editor

The top US military officer warned Sunday that the United States faces "a 10-year issue" in Syria as it weighs how deeply it wants to get involved the country's war.

Army Gen. Martin Dempsey told CNN's State of the Union that the conflict is entwined in a regional issue that is now spilling over into both Lebanon and Iraq, and those underlying causes "will persist for 10 years."

"It is related - not exclusively - but related to a competition at best and a conflict at worse between the Sunni and Shia sects of Islam," said Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

He added, "This is about a 10-year issue, and if we fail to think about it as a 10-year regional issue, we could make some mistakes."
Dempsey, Obama's principal military adviser, told CNN the war in Syria is "not a simple matter of stopping the fight by the introduction of any particular US capability."

"It seems to me that we need to understand what the peace will look like before we start the war," he said.

The problem according to Dempsey is that "radical Islamists" have taken control of the fighting and any aid we send will benefit them.

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team