Remarks of Commandant of the Marine Corps, General James T. Conway
“George P. Shultz Lecture Series”

Marines’ Memorial Association and World Affairs Council
San Francisco, CA Wednesday, July 10, 2007

Folks, it’s great to be with you tonight in America ’s most cosmopolitan city. I intend to offer a few remarks, and then I certainly look forward to your questions.

I sat this week and listened to a United States Senator who criticized the U.S. effort in Iraq as being involved in an Iraqi civil war while ignoring the real fight against terrorism that was taking place in Afghanistan.

With due respect to the senator, I would offer that he is wrong on two counts. The fact is that there is no civil war taking place in Iraq by any reasonable metric. There is certainly sectarian strife, but even that is on the declining scale over the past six months. Ironically, this strife was brought about and inflamed by the very terrorists some claim do not exist in Iraq . The sectarian strife is a tactic aimed at creating chaos with little risk to the instigator while it ties down coalition forces.

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