They're over-equipped, under-trained, and led by political appointees rather than proven men. They're facing off against hard veterans who know what they're doing.. .and home is at most a few hour's drive away.

Desertion was an immense problem on both sides of the civil war, simply because home was so close. I imagine it's the same thing in Iraq

Our stooge there is a Shia tribeman, who only hires fellow shia. This bs about borders, etc is a fiction to keep the west happy. The army runs away because they know the sunni hate them and they won't fight for them .

This war is lost for America. We lost it due to our ignorence and willful blindness to human nature and the difference between peoples.

The sectarian divide is real, Shia vs Sunni.

Who knows what the solution is . . . partitioning, or just be resigned to a Shia vs Sunni civil war, which actually might be what's going on now.

We should withdraw. We should not be picking winners and losers.

And all sides will have the bomb. The christians have been driven out and other minorities will leave or die. Kurdistan will happen.

This has to be worked out by the people there.

Cheney/Bush made the worst foreign policy move ever by invading Iraq.

Invading Canada was a pretty big boner too.

Last edited Mon May 25, 2015, 09:21 AM - Edit history (2)

That was, after all, the inevitable consequence of the destruction of the central regime of the former Iraq? Just ask Bernard Lewis: http://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/1uua1r/bernard_lewiss_proposed_map_of_the_middle_east/

Lewis's plan is modeled on the imperial methods of the
Roman Empire: Grant local autonomy to a myriad of squabbling
and politically impotent ethnic enclaves over which
Rome can wield its military strength without difficulty. The
subjected enclaves have a long leash, as long as the tribute
is paid to Rome.
A geopolitical aim of the Bernard Lewis plan was the
breakup of the edges of the Soviet empire. With this now
accomplished, Lewis, in his article "Rethinking the Mideast,"
predicts that the Middle East will undergo a process
of "Lebanonization "-a reference to the years-long civil war
unleashed in Lebanon in 1975 by then-U.S. Secretary of
State Henry Kissinger. The war pitted Lebanon's Catholic,
Palestinian, Shiite Muslim, Sunni Muslim, Druze, and Greek
Orthodox populations against each other.

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/middle-east/1992-09-01/rethinking-middle-east

Again, this is ethnic and tribal. Our silly economic argyments hold little water in teibal societies.

We think, because we trained and equipped them, they can beat anyone. We have a very materialistic view of war, like everything else. That the best equipment in the world does not mean diddly in the hands of unmotivated troops is a lesson we haven't quite learned. Nor have we quite learned the corollary, that if motivation is present, it doesn't really matter how the troops are equipped and trained. They may lose a lot of people, but they'll fight to the end.

-- Mal

were learned - John McGramps is proof, but at least we knew he was at the bottom of his class.

If the only thing holding a country together is overwhelming military force, then let it split up. They can have 100 city-states for all I care.

or it is that profit is way more important than human lives to the 'national interests'.

That is the real problem.

It's that their own agendas are considered more important. The problem is the US government underestimated (and continues to underestimate) how wide the sectarian divisions really are. Iraq is having trouble not with weapons or money or training, they are having trouble with cultural cohesion. They can't get behind one flag because there are too many alternate agendas going on.

A lot of this was hidden under Saddam. Saddam used an iron fist to clamp down on radicals and force the divisions to stay at peace. When the US got rid of Saddam, there was a power vacuum and there was no one left to keep the radicals under control. So you had the various sects suddenly decide that they were going to start settling some scores and trying to elevate themselves into power.

The US was so focused on the invasion and toppling of Saddam they didn't anticipate the cultural difficulties of the aftermath.