People talk about closing Iraq's borders as if there's one road and a gate, and all we need to do is close it
From what I've read, just the border with Syria would be more like trying to fence off the Rocky Mountains - it would take at least as many armed forces as the combined US/Iraqi effort currently engaged, and then that again just to try to keep them supplied.
Not really. It’s less than 400 miles long, you could station a soldier every 100 yards and still require only 7000 soldiers — multiply by 5 to allow for multiple shifts and support personnel. With cameras, checkpoints, and armored vehicles, you could do even better, 1 outpost of 3 soldiers every 1/2 mile would be plenty, that’s 2400 on duty at a time, 12000 after you multiply by 5. That’s much less than 1/10 of the forces we have there, assuming we were doing it all by ourselves, but the Iraqi army would contribute at least as much manpower as we would.
We can at least try.
Right now it seems the US and Iraqi forces aren’t even trying to close the border. But then again it should be no suprise since we don’t even try to close our own border to invaders!