Training lower enlisted and junior officers does not take a long time. Building an NCO and Officer corps and developing good mid level and senior leaders does take a long time. We did not stay long enough for any of that to happen. I think it is probably true that Iraqi Army soldiers were reasonably well trained when we left and degraded over time without good senior level leadership or guidance.
It’s not the training. It is hard to take a person, or a nation of people, who has never had any free will over their own life and then free that person from a tyrannical dictator, and then expect them to stand up and fight for their freedom.
If they had that desire for freedom in the first place they would have used it against their oppressor.