Latest Rout Raises Questions About Iraqi Military’s Ability To Defeat ISIS

Fox ^ | 9/25/2014 | cnn

[tobyhill]

This is what an ISIS rout looks like in Iraq:

Up to 300 troops killed. Others missing, possibly dead or having fled. Dozens of military vehicles, from tanks to ambulances, destroyed or seized. And the Iraqi military in disarray, so much so the country’s Prime Minister has sent “anti-terrorism forces … to hold the negligent (military) leaders responsible.”

What happened Sunday east of Falluja, around military encampments in Saqlawiyah and Sejar, is bad enough for the Iraqi government. Yet what makes it worse is that it’s happened before.

This latest incident was particularly galling because, according to surviving Iraqi soldiers, military commanders didn’t follow up on troops’ pleas for airstrikes or other help, and instead stranded them.

[Mr Ramsbotham]

I have a feeling that the Iraqi military specialized in milking American assistance for all it was worth, but not a whole lot more.

[Chgogal]

This latest incident was particularly galling because, according to surviving Iraqi soldiers, military commanders didn’t follow up on troops’ pleas for airstrikes or other help, and instead stranded them.

Piss poor leadership there and piss poor leadership here.

Not good. Not good at all.

[JimSEA]

Remember Saddam’s crack troops and the mother of all battles? Me too and this is a replay. They won’t even fight to save their own lives. Yet the religious fanatics fight to their death.

[Mariner]

You'd think that men who KNOW they are going to die the most horrible death, would fight...if for nothing else but to live.

But these crazy Arabs can't even get that part right.

Every time they come against a committed foe, every time, they fold in defeat.

[lavaroise]

Yep. Seems like they are like girls, hoping they can please the enemy out of its wrath.

typical pedophile culture reaction.

[glorgau]

The Germans are sending a team out to trains the Kurds - lets see how that turns out. I hear the Kurds actually care about keeping ISIS out of their territory.

[Attention Surplus Disorder]

I’m not much of a military expert, but I suspect this is not true. I think this is going to be seriously bloody war effort, with plenty of casualties. To some extent, this is a pan-Arab movement that is likely to draw adherents for quite a while, and these early successes are going to be bait. This could be the “real” Iraq war-—the “rehearsal” war having lasted 2003-2012, depending upon when and where you want to count. This thing could go on for 20+ years. It really could. If the US isn’t going to get genocidal, it surely will. In my view, the US has to get as aggressive as possible and really work to exterminate these forces. Anything short of that is just a delaying tactic.

Early in the Civil War and WW2, the US (or the Union, in the Civil war) suffered some horrific battlefield losses. It is utterly unclear to any of us whether enough fighting men who wish to preserve the sovereignty of Iraq over the creation of this levant thing will muster, sustain, and persist. This is part of our complete ignorance of this part of the world.

In WW2, there weren’t many US-Japan interactions between Pearl Harbor (Dec ‘41) and Midway (Jun ‘42) but the US got smoked in almost every battle before Midway.

This war with the Muslims, whatever you wish to call it...this is a far more dedicated and better armed and financed enemy than what we fought in Iraq 2003-2010. The experts claim there are 30K ISIS and it would not surprise me to find that number double or even triple by the time the non-ISIS forces come to realize the intensity of fighting they are going to have to muster and sustain. While we can take out some from the air, I doubt that will be decisive. Do we think we can take them out 15:1? 10:1? 50:1? Obviously it depends upon how brutal the US is able to ramp up its game.

But if there are 60K ISIS and we can take them out 30:1, that’s still 2000 dead on our side. I don’t know anyone who thinks this is going to be a walkover.

[Jim Noble]

ARVN.

39 years later, and that’s STILL the plan?

[Jim Noble]

Your analogy with Japan is very good.

Except that when they beheaded the doctors and gang-raped the nurses at St. Stephen’s Hospital, nobody said we were fighting “terrorism”, and President Roosevelt didn’t announce that what they were doing wasn’t True Shinto, which was really a a Religion of Peace.

Kill Japs, Kill Japs, Kill more Japs. That’s what’s missing here.

[Paul R.]

The Germans can train the Kurds how to use the German modern weapons, and the Kurds can remind the Germans how to fight.

[Paul R.]

I understand the point you are making, but, then again, if the US had not abandoned and largely defunded the AVRN, or, more recently, pro-U.S. forces in Afghanistan after the Russians left, those outcomes may have been much different...

However, I still agree that our present strategy is highly suspect. Those Iraqis who actually are pro US, or, at least, anti-ISIS, are generally part of the same groups that the minority in power have successfully and often brutally dominated, for a long time. This does not bode well for making them (the historically dominated) the “boots on the ground” spearhead of the effort vs. ISIS.

The Kurds, da, (God [or Allah] bless them), ARE good fighters, but I don’t think they alone can defeat ISIS on the ground, across the region, even if well supplied by the West & backed by “Allied” air power.

Also.... My guess is that the Kurds primarily want to hold onto their own territory and not overextend. Maybe someone more knowledgeable can comment on that.

[Zman516]

If the Iraqi army whom the US trained and equipped for years fell apart at their first test, imagine how impossible it will be to make Obozo’s rag-tag “coalition” of mixed ragheads into a viable fighting force.

It’s a disaster in the making.

[Paul R.]

Sadly, I think you are right. While we pummeled Saddam’s army, we, in an effort to be humane, didn’t pummel the country badly, and then immediately rushed in reconstruction and aid. Even most of Saddam’s (human, or inhuman, in many cases) support structure got away, were released (Baghdad Bob comes to mind), etc.

A lot of that “structure” were evil, vicious people, but they weren’t highly motivated beyond succeeding in that structure and Saddam’s cult of personality. Once the US had it crumbling, they fled (or at least we did not eliminate many of them). Some joined later insurgencies, but, again, most were not “fight to the death” types, nor did we do a good job of eliminating them “en masse” in the later actions.

So, essentially, a large group of these vicious animals remain, they have never truly been scourged, and now they have found a more compelling conviction: ISIS brand fanaticism coincidentally (HAH!) coming into conflict with a weak-willed West, led by an exceptionally weak US President.

[Attention Surplus Disorder]

But....over and above the nation-specific attack conducted on Iraq...this thing has a decidedly pan-Arab theme to it. ISIS will have no problem construing this as an existential pan-Arab struggle and IMO, the worse it gets (for them) the better they will be able to draw converts from all the Islamic nations of the world. And there are a lot of them.

There are several implications, again, me not being a military expert. One is, it is entirely conceivable that Arab nations pretending to be on our side will assist ISIS with the idea that the continued struggle ties down and demoralizes the US. This is certainly a well-worn tactic used with the Palestinians, and the financiers of same (could be private people within KSA or Dubai or UAE, easily) could give a crap about a few thousand Libyan or Moroccan or Indonesian mercenaries chewed up. After all, the longer the US is involved over there, the more likely it is that some country pretending to be on our side can expect a pallet or two of hundred dollar bills, or, helicopters or howitzers. Like Iraq got.

I frankly do not think there is much of anything for the US in this part of the world, but there’s no question, we have stirred up a hornet’s nest and our premature withdrawal from Iraq (not that I was especially gung-ho on that effort) has truly left a massive vacuum and clumsily messed up a lot of countries. However, as we advance and persist in this new anti-ISIS effort, I believe the risk of terror events in the West will increase dramatically. This is quite corrosive, IMO, it is like discovering a massive termite infestation in your house and a ton of repair has to be done just to get back to where you thought you already were.

When we exited Iraq, there’s no doubt that many gave a sigh of relief thinking we were getting out of a potential 50+ year involvement in terms of “presence” over there. But if we were not willing to do that, we should have never gone into those countries in the first place. (This is an old tired argument, I know)

The premise that these countries, any of them, had any sort of larval-democratic underpinnings or that such sprouts could be made to grow in their soils was stupid naive, as far as I am concerned. There was not then and there is not now anything resembling a civil society. They have one guiding principle, Islam, and anything else is a denial of Islam and that is the end of the story.