The Washington Post has a story on the training of the new Iraqi Army that is revealing of the mindset behind the already expanding American disaster in Iraq: an absolutely brilliant plan is being developed by the U.S. military now that much of the Iraqi Army has collapsed not to build such a monster collapsible force again, but to build a much smaller one, possibly only half as collapsible, that hopefully wont go down in a heap quite so quickly. Unfortunately, the force U.S. military commanders have in mind will, they believe, be incapable of taking back Iraqs second largest city, Mosul, from the Islamic State. A solution without a solution, it seems. Hmmm... call it a paradox wrapped in an enigma seasoned by a pickle. Only obvious solution: American boots on the ground. The plan, as described in the Post, seems (as imagined by U.S. military planners at least) like nothing short of a plan for the future intervention of U.S. combat forces. Tom After learning hard lessons rebuilding foreign militaries over the past dozen years, the U.S. military is shifting its strategy against the Islamic State, choosing to train a smaller number of Iraqi soldiers rather than trying to stand up an entire army anew. At their peak, Iraqi combat forces, painstakingly built and paid for by the United States during the last Iraq war, numbered about 400,000 troops. By the time the Islamist militant group launched its advance across northern Iraq in June, the Iraqi forces had shrunk by as much as half, depleted by years of corruption, absenteeism and decay. When the Islamic State completed its seizure of the city of Mosul, four Iraqi army divisions and another from the federal police had disappeared, shrinking the original combat force to as few as 85,000 active troops, according to expert estimates. As the Obama administration scrambles to counter the Islamic State, commanders have decided against trying to rebuild entire vanished divisions or introduce new personnel in underperforming, undermanned units across the country, according to U.S. officials. Rather, the officials said, the hope is to build nine new Iraqi army brigades — up to 45,000 light-infantry soldiers — into a vanguard force that, together with Kurdish and Shiite fighters, can shatter the Islamic State’s grip on a third of the country... The vanguard force, for instance, would be smaller than what is required to retake Mosul, where hostility toward Baghdad’s Shiite-led government has long fueled support for insurgents. Officials hope an offensive to reclaim the city can occur in the first quarter of 2015. Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has said that three divisions, or roughly 80,000 troops, would be needed to attempt an assault on Mosul. washingtonpost/world/national-security/us-seeks-to-build-lean-iraqi-force-to-fight-the-islamic-state/2014/11/27/f9539046-757b-11e4-bd1b-03009bd3e984_story.html?hpid=z1
Posted on: Sat, 29 Nov 2014 14:00:01 +0000
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