On Day Four of clashes in Mosul between encroaching jihadists and Iraqi security forces, two officers visited an outpost of the Iraqi 2nd Division’s logistics battalion with bad news: they said that all senior commanders had fled.Compare and contrast with the story about the American contractors, who were able to pick up the rifles dropped by the fleeing soldiers and hold off the ISIS until they could be extracted.
Stunned and confused, the men called headquarters and received the same information, that all officers colonel and above had abandoned their posts....
Had the Iraqi military brass in Mosul been chosen because of competency rather than cronyism, Nasseri suggested, perhaps the Islamic State’s march toward Baghdad could’ve been halted, or at least stalled.
“I know what I need to know about fighting in a city,” Nasseri said. “I fought side by side with Americans. Their military has leaders that tell the soldiers what the plan is, and fight. We don’t. There were many more terrorists in Fallujah and the fight was over in a month. (Mosul) wouldn’t have been a big problem if we had leaders.”
For Tom, Who Asked
'Why did the Iraqi Army melt away?,' Tom asked recently. We went through a few reasons at the time. Here's an interview that confirms some of them, for a Shi'a soldier from a distant (and safe) city, with officers and fellow soldiers he didn't trust to do their duty.
Extracted by Bill T.-trained Iraqi Air Force helicopter pilots, I'd like to add.
ReplyDeleteWhen I read the story about who came to get them, I knew Mr. DeBille was proud of the guys he trained. Even said so to MH as I was reading the story.
I liked a lot of the Iraqis I knew. Because I was working with the tribes, a lot of them were irregulars rather than formal members of the Iraqi military.
ReplyDeleteSome of them were fierce fighters. We were trying to broker a peace between warring camps, and the IA was supposed to be the guarantor when we left. The leadership was always a mixed bag, but some of the best units were led by men we also trusted. The 1st and the 17th IA were good units in our area. I don't know how they've weathered several years under Maliki, but when I left in 2009 they were reliable.
I appreciate the longer answer. It's sad that good fighting men are placed in the care of cowards, wherever and whenever it happens.
ReplyDeleteOn a related note, it seems that Obama has fired 195 senior US military officers in the last few years.
ReplyDeleteWell, I think that's true, but I'm not sure how important it is. There are a million soldiers in the Army, to say nothing of the rest of the military. Mostly these firings seem to be for sexual reasons. In a way that's understandable -- in an era of repeated and extended deployments, it's not totally shocking to discover that people have affairs, or turn toward pornography.
ReplyDeleteIndeed, in a military drawn from a culture that is absolutely soaked with sexuality (and which sees nothing wrong with sexuality, indeed celebrates it as a or even the chief source of meaning in life), it's amazing that General Order #1 hasn't resulted in firing the whole army.
Probably it hasn't only because we can't actually afford to enforce an order so completely out of order with the American culture's sense of what's right and wrong. Adultery a crime? Nonsense! Fornication? Pornography?
So we 'enforce' it by making examples of those who are really prominent and get caught at it. Then we hope that hanging a few generals and CSMs will encourage the Joes to at least keep it discreet.
When "law" is all encompassing so as to result in everyone being a "criminal", it becomes easy to prosecute your political enemies under the pretext of some other infraction. That is what the NSA files are designed for. Find someone you want removed, and search the database for information, get someone to push it into public view and there is your tool.
ReplyDeleteThey have admitted this is what they have done with mickey mouse civil crimes,finding violations by illegal data collection, then informing state or local cops about them ,with the caveat that the information must appear to result from some other source, like a random car search or anonymous informant. Why would we think the playbook would be any different for a political opponent?
A good point, I suppose. I tend to think that the military's sexual laws are in general good for order and discipline; although I think General Order #1 went way overboard given the relative youth of the force and the length and frequency of the deployments.
ReplyDeleteIt was originally written for troops in Desert Storm, who were off on a one-time punitive strike based out of Saudi Arabia. The idea behind the order was that we all had to behave for a few weeks to avoid offending our host nationals. Under those circumstances it made sense, but it didn't make anything like the same kind of sense in Iraq -- which a much less strict culture, where you were deployed for six and eight and twelve and even fifteen months at a time, back to back deployments.
At one time enforcement was so strict that you could get busted for having a fitness magazine, because those tend to show more flesh than a Saudi is comfortable seeing. That was interpreted as violating the ban on pornography.
It's no wonder to me that there have been so many violations. You take an American who grew up in this sexualized society, that's his or her context for what normal looks like. You give them government-sponsored 'health' courses in High School that teach them to masturbate and that it's just fine to enjoy sex, just use condoms and birth control. So that message has official endorsement from the state.
Then you send them at 19 to Iraq, and expect them to live for a year or more like a celibate monk? Heck, the monks could at least have a glass of beer at appropriate times.
Ft. Hood would stand little better chance with Casey in charge.
ReplyDeleteWhen the upper officers open the gates to the barbarians and orders the security forces to stand down, what are people going to do?
New Orleans PD deserted and went awol during Katrina. I guess that's easy to forget, since Americans like feeling superior to foreigners.
ReplyDeleteAll those Dems thinking a black man in the White House will make the world bend knee. It's working out as expected.
The PD may have, but not the National Guard or any of the troops sent in to help with the recovery. Two majorly different entities, Ymar, and you damn well know it.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of liking to fell superior, have you looked in a mirror lately, because your posts are becoming rather predicably ignorable.
"feel" not "fell"
ReplyDeleteWhen Americans can't fight a recognizable enemy, they go after each other. The government. The public or the media.
ReplyDeleteLike now.
The humans in New Orleans are no different from the US National Guard, under American equality. It just takes a bit of imagination to visualize what it would take for the Guard to be federalized and turned into the same kind of regime tool as the NOPD.
But right now, instead of directing angst and disfavor upon American institutions, Americans prefer a target that feels safer to isolate, such as the Iraqis.
My mirror tells me my writing content hasn't changed since 2008. It's all the same predictions and reactions.
Nothing you do, say, think, or feel will change it. Just as nothing Americans do, say, think or feel will change national guilt or national fate, at this point in time.
Things are just going to go on, until it something changes it.
The National Guard or perhaps it was some military units, were rumored to have helped the local police forces confiscate weapons from the residents, shortly before or after the AWOL incidents. Well, whether they obeyed because they wanted to or whether they obeyed because there was a mix up in what people considered lawful orders (NOPD would consider it law to order the NG to help with gun confiscation, and without federalization of the NG their chain of command would be tied to local cooperation).
To the world, to fate, and to god, there is no difference between one American using American power and elections to do evil, and all the rest of the nation sitting around doing nothing or not participating. The guilt is equal. The consequences are equal. Even for Iraqis, those consequences touch them if their fellow countrymen decide to bail out or betray their military men.
Until the Leftist alliance is destroyed in the US, "mirrors" will not kill the witch.