Why the Iraqi army keeps failing

Washington Post ^ | 05/19/2015 | By Ishaan Tharoor

[JoeFromSidney]

Machiavelli: "Gold will not get you good soldiers, but good soldiers will get you gold."

[EQAndyBuzz]

The Iraqi army isn’t losing. ISIS is the Iraqi army. They are fighting conscripts, Shia and Kurds. Sound familiar?

Instead of Sarin they are beheading people. And with Assad in Iran’s sphere, they have no use for him like Saddam did. Holy war? This is a flat out Iraqi Republican Guard on the move. If it was religious, the Saudi’s would be standing with them. The Saudis are scared to death.

Caliphate? Yup, Iran vs Iraq just like 1978-80. And just like that time, we have a Democrat in the white hut who can’t spell cat if spotted the C and the T.

[Bluestocking]

It’s hard to believe a military leader could make a whinier, more pathetic statement about a war in progress than “there are going to be ebbs and flows.’’

The U.S. has the mightiest military in the world. The purpose of its generals is to devise a winnable war plan, get it approved by the Commander-in-Chief, and then carry it out swiftly and successfully — which our generals have failed to do in Iraq.

Why? Every general in the world understands that it’s almost impossible to win wars from the air only, because it’s impossible for planes to consistently hit strategic targets without directions from soldiers on the ground.

So it’s likely that our generals presented a war plan including boots on the ground to Obama, which Obama rejected. At which point, every honorable general in the Pentagon would have handed in his/her resignation rather than be a party to sending our young men and women in to fight a war that they knew was unwinnable.

Which means that the only generals left are not honorable. They’re the ones sending Pentagon spokesmen out to make statements about ebbs and flows because they’re too embarrassed to make such pathetic statements themselves, and they’re also whining to Congressional committees about Ramadi not being strategically important.

This is why Iraq as a civilized country is doomed — not because the Iraqi army is weak, we’ve known that from the start, but because our president and his generals have knowingly refused to do what is necessary to help the Iraqis preserve their country.

[ExSES]

You’re dealing with a culture that can pivot on a dime depending on a situation, which way the wind is blowing. If the wind were blowing against IS, they would go that way.

Reminds me of numerous British observations over the past several hundred years that...., "You can rent an Arab but you will never own them"... For that matter, it is always true that you can "Rent" loyalty but it can only be given freely, regardless of ethnicity!!!

[EEGator]

Maybe Slow Joe was right. Maybe it should split up.

As an aside, I think the world would be a much better place if every Muslim died.

[pierrem15]

The Iraqi army as supplied, trained and equipped under Bush dissolved after US forces left-- the Iraqi government replaced their commanders with corrupt Shiite officers who looted the army's coffers and provided little or no training to the army. Almost all of the original army trained by the US left and was replaced by Shiite neer-do-wells looking for a free meal.

Without US trainers embedded with the Iraqi units to provide constant training (and supervision of corrupt and incompetent officers), the current Iraqi army will never be worth a damn.