Well, this is just splendid. Turns out that what Bush called Iraq's "defining moment" has defined what an incompetent boob Maliki is, and how pathetic is the US-trained Iraqi Army. Excerpt:
But interviews with a wide range of American and military officials also suggest that Mr. Maliki overestimated his military’s abilities and underestimated the scale of the resistance. The Iraqi prime minister also displayed an impulsive leadership style that did not give his forces or that of his most powerful allies, the American and British military, time to prepare.“He went in with a stick and he poked a hornet’s nest, and the resistance he got was a little bit more than he bargained for,” said one official in the multinational force in Baghdad who requested anonymity. “They went in with 70 percent of a plan. Sometimes that’s enough. This time it wasn’t.”
As the Iraqi military and civilian casualties grew and the Iraqi planning appeared to be little more than an improvisation, the United States mounted an intensive military and political effort to try to turn around the situation, according to accounts by Mr. Crocker and several American military officials in Baghdad and Washington who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Two senior American military officers — a member of the Navy Seals and a Marine major general — were sent to Basra to help coordinate the Iraqi planning, the military officials said. Soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division were pressed into service as combat advisers while air controllers were positioned to call in airstrikes on behalf of beleaguered Iraqi units. American transport planes joined the Iraqis in ferrying supplies to Iraqi troops.
How lame is the Iraqi Army? Tonight comes news that over 1,000 Iraqi soldiers attacking Basra deserted during the fight, including two senior commanders.
We are so screwed.
George W. Bush is a relatively young man. He will have many years ahead of him to see what he's done, and to contemplate the gravity of it. Meanwhile, our men and women under arms soldier on. My brother-in-law flies back to Iraq tomorrow. God help him, and all our troops.
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I think the take home here is not so much the inadequacy of the Iraqi Army and Maliki, but rather how entwined Iran is in Iraq now. Iran has ties with all the major Shia players now, not just Sadr. There is still no love lost between the Sunnis and Iran. Sadr has shown himself adept at getting out of things if they look as though they are going to go bad.
If I were in Iran's position Id be pushing the Shia to stop fighting each other and work on getting the casualties down. The neocons running this think we have won anyway. Reinforce that opinion, then as soon as we leave its all there for the taking. Oh, if you are interested in following iraq/Afghanistan events the Small Wars Journal blog lists all the war relevant articles in major publications everyday.
Steve
They aren't terribly bad fighters, friends, really. The Iraqis can fight. Or else we would not be having this discussion at all, now would we? They have managed to bring the world's best equipped, and arguably best-trained and best-disciplined military to a virtual strategic standstill with little more than explosives, old AK-47s, arty shells, ingenuity, and some walkie-talkies. The only reason we're currently succeeding is because some of them have switched sides, not because we have out-fought them.
The Iraq army has organizational and logistical issues. And divided loyalties. THAT's the main problem right there.
We owe it to the children of Iraq to gain and maintain stability. We started it, we are responsible for it. But we are providing the best conceivable training ground for a generation of Jihadists by remaining where we are. And we are not exactly refreshing our own forces or equipment.
We are between a rock and a hard place here. There are no right decisions here. Only less wrong ones.
Steve, yeah, that would be the smart thing for Iran to do.
George W. Bush is plenty old enough to see the truth, if he wanted to see it. I doubt he'll change his mind as he ages.
The Watcher
Geeze, Rod, WE WON ALREADY. Yes, Saddam is gone. We won. Got it yet?
You know, it's people like this that inspire decidedly unChristian thoughts in me.
Hey, buddy. The point isn't 'to win'. If we wanted to win a war, we should have invaded Cuba. We would have won that one easily.
There are only two reasons to fight wars, and none of them are 'to win'. The first reason is that the country is empire-building, and the second is to solve a serious internal governmental problem, like stopping someone else from empire-building or stopping genocide.
Those are the only two rational reasons you'd send your army into someone else's country. Note I haven't made any claim about morality or ability or what qualifies as a 'problem'...just that those two are literally the only reasons rational leaders of countries would go into other countries. To gain control of the country, or to alter that country's behavior.
Winning the war is a means to those ends, not an end in and of itself. You can win a war and not accomplish either of those goals, you can lose a war and still accomplish those goals. (Most 'border disputes' result in the invading force retreating back and thus technically 'losing', but a statement is made about what the invading country will tolerate and where the line is, so they 'win' in what they are trying to accomplish.)
In Iraq, even if you assume there was some sort of serious problem there to start with (Saddam was nowhere near the worse dictator in the world, and most of the daily problems people faced was due to sanctions, not Saddam.), there's no one way that we can reasonable be interpreted to have stopped said problems. The point wasn't to win the war, the point was to stop the problems. We didn't do that. We gave them a lot more internal problems. We have not succeeded in Iraq.
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