Posted on 12/30/2015 1:22:29 PM PST by SeekAndFind
The Iraqi Army announced on Monday that it had reclaimed the Sunni-majority city of Ramadi from the Islamic State. But Iraq and its Western allies had best curb its enthusiasm: Counting the win as a major victory obscures how bad Iraq still has it. While the reduction of Islamic State territory is a delight in the abstract, in this case it comes with a reminder that the ongoing collapse of Iraq has much less to do with ISIS than we'd like to believe.
We can trace the reason why back to Ramadi's fall this May, when approximately 6,000 Iraqi police were bested by 150 Islamic State fighters, according to Kurdish intelligence and statistics shared with former U.S. Central Command advisor Ali Khedery. The jihadi force, which peaked this winter at perhaps 400 militants, managed to drive the Iraqi Army, special forces, and government personnel out of Ramadi.
The obvious question is why, and for close observers of Iraqi politics, the answer is just as obvious. The country's Shia faction has cemented control not only over the Baghdad government but the balance of military power, fusing these two levers together into a single instrument of policy designed to destroy Sunni influence.
Just as the Shia regime has ensured that U.S. arms earmarked for the Kurdish peshmerga arrive as slowly as possible, if at all, it has also done its best to keep Sunni elements of the Iraqi army dispirited, disorganized, and weak. It was a typically beleaguered and sabotaged Sunni force in Ramadi that was chased away — but not before Baghdad added insult to injury, allowing Ramadi to beg for help from controversial Shia militias that have been blamed for atrocities against Sunnis.
(Excerpt) Read more at theweek.com ...
We should have taken out Saddam, and left. This nation building crap was wrongheaded from the git-go.
“Letting the Shias take over was a Paul Bremer/ George W Bush decision.”
Every conservative was signing the “let freedom riiiiing” tune back then. Questioning nation building was a pure heresy, especially in FR. Bush could not be questioned. Only MoveOn questioned Bush. No need to blame Bush for this. His country supported his actions.
We should have left Saddam in power. He was a dick, to be sure, and not our friend. But he kept a lid on the radical jihadis. Just like Khadafi, Mubarak, and Assad.
I have no faith in the Iraqis to defend their homeland when they are challenged. Wasn’t it just last spring when 6000+ Iraqi troops were sent running away from just 150 ISIS thugs?
If the Iraqis are Sunni, as most ISIS, those men will often refuse to fight or kill another Sunni.
Jihadists = relatively disorganized, feared by Russia/China, fragmented, individual terror ops, low scale casualties.
Secular Dictators = very organized, supported by Russia/China, organized intelligence ops overseas, mass scale casualty potential.
I could see why nations fear organized, rational, secular dictators more so than the lunatic jihadists.
The zeitgeist is way more powerful than people think. That’s why we need to hold fast to principals and eschew ANYONE who dismisses them. I made that mistake with Bush. I didn’t vote for him in the primary, but I did in the general, defended him, and was rewarded with Obama. Not doing it this time.
The key here is “ratiional.” Khadafi got uppity...once. A few bombs on his house and he never bothered us again. And the mass casualties they represent are mostly their own, not us. They feared us, and it kept them in line.
The jihadis are crazy. They hate us, too, but aren’t afraid. And as for “low scale casualties,” 9/11/01 was not low-scale. In fact, I think they are just warming up. Wait until they decide to have their “Night of the Long Knives” in Europe. There are enough of them, the mosques have the weapons, and the Europeans are unarmed and blissfully ignorant.
Unlike Americans who are armed to the teeth.
No, Saddam was supporting terrorism. He needed to be taken out. But the exit strategy was seriously flawed. You needed 80 years of culture rebuilding and Christianization before you attempted democracy.
Tribalism pure and simple, it was a fools attempt to get them to act like the west, and getting involved deeply with the whole ME for that matter many decades ago.
Should have got some of our own damn oil somewhere else.
More like 800
Nothing wrong with nation-building. Letting the locals run the show was a mistake, though. Uncle Sam ruled the American sector of Germany, Italy and Japan for years, via various proconsuls aka US Army generals. The generals' word was law. In Iraq we paid the bills, but Iraqis made the rules. That was a mistake. Bottom line is that Bush was incompetent. He couldn't even do public relations over Katrina, so it's pretty clear that he was simply overwhelmed by the challenge of Iraq. Our amply-funded military machine bailed him out. If we had the budget of the French military, we'd have been handed an embarrassing military defeat*.
* Unless we went Mongol and whacked the entire Iraqi population.
Historically that's the way it's always been done. The Romans called them "governors" instead of Generals.
Not my circus.
Not my monkeys.
No, he needed to be converted.
If, the day after OBL's presence was confirmed at Tora Bora, we had obliterated the place with 4 W-78s (as we should have), Saddam and Bush would have been best friends the very next day.
We could have then conquered Saudi Arabia and Yemen (as we should have) using Saddam's army, split the oil with him, put Uday or Qusay on the throne, and lived happily ever after.
“Letting the Shias take over was a Paul Bremer/ George W Bush decision.”
Bremer should have never been there. But the fact is that the Shiites are a majority there. I don’t like letting them “take over”. But at least 60% of the country is Shiite and two of the holiest places in Shiite islam are there.
It would be odd to tell them “sorry, you need to remain forever under the thumb of the Sunnis”.
Zarqawi and his sunnis bombed the Golden dome mosque in 2006 and set the Iraq civil war into high gear.
The fact is that secular Ahole guys like Saddam, Kaddafy, and Assad are the only way that artificially constructed nations with 3 to 5 different minorities can be held together.
Bush was an idiot to think American freedom was about to sweep the middle east.
“Jihadists = relatively disorganized, feared by Russia/China, fragmented, individual terror ops, low scale casualties”.
You mean like 9/11? 7/7? Spanish Train bombings? Paris?
None of those came from the strongmen like Assad, Saddam, or Khaddafy.
They all saw what happened to Libya in the 80s and have been quiet ever since.
The only idea I ever agreed with Joe Biden on was that Iraq should have been divide up into 3 countries. Sunni, Shiite and Kurds.
BTW, isn’t it funny that a major islamic denomination is spelled so closely to what we use a a profane curse word for crap?
“You needed 80 years of culture rebuilding and Christianization before you attempted democracy.”
80 years of blood, treasure, and pain in the ass. Never being able to have a day pass without discussing islam. No, the trival amount of terror Saddam sponsored was not worth that.
And if it was, explain why the Saudis that sponsor orders of magnitude more terror shouldn’t have been attacked first.
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