Correct me if I’m wrong. It seems that:
1. Prime Minister Nouri Maliki has weakened his military by replacing competent but untrusted Sunis with trusted but incompetent Shites.
2. As the current war progress it seems that the Sunis in the military are switching sides and supporting ISIS.
3. So maybe Maliki could see this coming and knew that he had to purge the military of the Sunis or it was inevitable that they would turn against him.
4. There aren’t enough competent military men amongst the Shites to support this approach. So Maliki is doomed in any case.
5. Obama could have saved him with some permanent troops.
6. Obama didn’t want to save him since he too is a Sunni Muslim.
I believe that our good friend Occam would support this theory.
Maliki has weakened “his” military by favoring Shiites, and like the Shiite NGO leaders (imams, mullahs, whatever), he was counting on eventually getting some pretext for killing people; Sunnis are not going to support this jihadist group based on alleged affiliation; Zero doesn’t have any particular loyallty to US allies, which Maliki (for all his faults) is; Zero is an apostate and secular dictator wannabee, and has been trying to switch US alliances around to get behind Iran and any gov’t or group which will align with it; Occam is a town.
Iraq unraveling as top Shiite cleric issues call to arms
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3167621/posts
Press Jester Jay Carney is Stupid Again, This Time on Iraq
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3167767/posts
I agree.
Maliki is keeping the Sunni/Shiite strife within the Iraq arm forces at a low simmer by only employing them defensively.
Furlough the low level Sunni’s soldiers and there is a very real risk they might show up as rebels Tomorrow.
Maliki might fear mass defections if he mounts a true offensive against Sunni areas. Even if they don’t defect the Sunni’s within the Iraqi forces could reek absolute havoc via sabotage.
Maliki has an armed forces he can’t use other than defensively and they are clearly ineffective in that role.
Iraq is just another extension of Iran. Iran is the problem..because Islam is the problem.
Not worth saving, only worth destroying. The only hope is that Iran will get a nuke then Israel will wipe the whole bunch off the face of the earth.
Otherwise the whole bunch will get nukes and then ......
Maliki did alienate the Sunni population and did sack a number of competent officers.
That being said, Mosul has always been the “wild west” of Iraq, similar to Fallujah, even in the good ol’ days of Saddam. Mosul is like the Detroit or Baltimore of Iraq. The one time Mosul was pacified was when the city government was the 101st Airborne.
That’s beside the point though. With a permanent base, then you’re exactly right, there wouldn’t have been as much tension that escalated to this point.
Our hope now is that 1) ISIL oversteps its welcome, similar to what AQI did in 2007 when they alienated the Sunni Anbar tribes, 2) the Iraqi Army and Sistanti’s “volunteers” hold the line at Samarrah, as they actually seem to have been doing since ISIL’s southward advance has stopped, and 3) the F-16 and Apache deliveries to the Iraqi military arrive faster than expected.
What we should have done: backed Iyad Allawi when he won most of the votes in the 2010 election but not enough to form a government on his own, and not pulled out troops in order to please Obama’s far left base.