In the past ten days, while Walt was preoccupied with weightier matters [The NHL playoffs? Ed.], the "Caliphate" struck back, seizing the key cities of Ramadi (in Iraq) and Palmyra (Syria). The loss of the latter is sad for the West because it was a centre of culture and civilization since for millennia, and priceless antiquities are now threatened with destruction by the Islamic barbarians. The toll of dead (beheaded and otherwise) and displaced (refugees) in both places continues to mount.
How did this happen? For over a year now, it will be remembered, the Paranoid States of America and its running dogs (O Canada!) have been bombing the excrement out of targets -- latrines, dumptrucks, and so forth -- in Iraq and Syria, with the avowed aim of "degrading" (not "defeating") "ISIL" (as Obama and Harper still call it), and keeping our countries safe from the dreaded Islamic terrorists.
Now, with the fall of Ramadia and Palmyra, the shekel has dropped. The coalition's defence honchos have belatedly realized that without boots on the ground, the mission against ISIS is futile. They tell us that they already knew that, but were relying on the Iraq's alleged army -- trained and advised by coalition troops -- to get the job done. How's that working out? At Ramadi, the Iraqis, although outnumbering the jihadists 10 to 1, turned tail and ran.
Pause for a little levity...
Q. How many gears to Iraqi tanks have? A. One forward, four reverse!
Q. What's the forward speed for? A. In case they're attacked from behind!
United States Secretary of Defense Ass Carter ["Ash"! Don't do that again. Ed.] didn't actually tell that joke on CNN last Sunday, but did, on the national air, criticize Iraqi soldiers for not being willing to fight and defend themselves. He blamed the biggest ISIS victory in almost a year on something that sounded a lot like Iraqi cowardice. What he actually said was, "What apparently happened [in Ramadi] is that the Iraqi forces showed no will to fight. They were not outnumbered. In fact, they vastly outnumbered the opposing force. And yet they failed to fight."
Mr. Carter’s frustrations are apparently shared by the Prez. Mr. 0 told The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg that "if the Iraqis are not willing to fight for the security of their country, then we cannot do it for them."
In "Why Iraq's Military Has No Will to Fight" Matt Schiavenza says it’s easy to see why Washington is unhappy with Baghdad. He writes: "In the eight years since the US formally occupied Iraq, the US invested $25 billion in training and equipping the country’s armed forces before withdrawing in 2011. To this day, a much smaller number of American soldiers remain in the country in order to train Iraqi soldiers.
"What accounts for the Iraqi military’s failure? Many problems stem from the Bush administration’s decision to disband the existing Iraqi military in 2003 and build a new one from scratch. Intended to rid the institution of officers linked to Saddam Hussein, the move instead left thousands of armed men unemployed and embittered. This contributed to a security vacuum within Iraqi society and fed a vicious anti-US insurgency. Many high-ranking officials who served under Saddam have now become senior commanders with ISIS.
"The Iraqi army is also notoriously corrupt, a legacy of Nouri al-Maliki’s years as prime minister. Fearful that a strong military would pose a threat to his power, al-Maliki replaced top commanders with political clients drawn from his Shiite sect, undermining any attempt to establish a merit-based system of promotion. So-called 'ghost battalions' draw salaries despite never reporting for duty, and the forces who do remain are no match for fanatical ISIS fighters.
"'Military training, no matter how intensive, and weaponry, no matter how sophisticated and powerful, is no substitute for belief in a cause,' William Astore, a former US Air Force lieutenant colonel, wrote last year in the American Conservative."
That's a very good analysis from a respected -- and liberal -- source. But it begs the question Walt and others have been asking since the beginning. What are "we" -- Obama's "coalition of Western democracies" -- doing there? Why are we meddling in the Middle East, taking sides in Islamic civil wars and jihads which are really none of our business? See "Canada re-ups for another year of the Obama war" and "Jordan's King Abdullah II speaks about the 'war within Islam'"
Quoting the Schiavenza article again: "The main problem with the Iraqi military is the problem with Iraq as a whole -— the country effectively no longer exists as a unified state. Kurdistan, for all intents and purposes, acts as an independent country. Much of the Sunni population lives in territories controlled by ISIS. The rump Iraqi government, meanwhile, operates in close cooperation with Iran, which funds Shiite militias that act as a paramilitary force. The Iraqi military, then, is less a cause of the country’s failures than a reflection of them."
Dear readers, Iraq is a fiasco! So says Ron Paul, in a dialogue with Daniel McAdams, the latest installment of the Ron Paul Liberty Report. Here's "Who Won't Fight in Iraq?".
No comments:
Post a Comment