In terms of the late Samuel P. Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations theory, Iraq is part of the Islamic civilization, which today has no core-state, but the Ottoman Empire (also encompassing some territories within Orthodox civilization) once was its core-state. Any sense of common identity shared by former Ottoman territories probably amounts to that – and only applies to those former Ottoman territories that were/are Islamic territories. Believe me, the Greeks and the Serbs have no sense of fellow-feeling with the Turks.
Well, the majority of Iraq’s population is Shi’ite. If a radical Sunni faction is marching on Baghdad to take power, which seems to be the goal of ISIS, that’s something they should want to fight against.
:rolleyes:
Come on. Tell me, how long would even the IDF detachments last in an area which is hostile, with a steady stream of enemy reinforcements, with no real air support to speak off an iffy logistics situation, insecure LOCs and with political leadership in deadlock and paralysis? No matter how brave the individual soldiers were.
Not long I bet. And failure would be because of the aforementioned issues, not because there was no desire to fight amongst the rank and file.
ANd this leads us to the next point; the US. The US wanted a constabulary when they rebuilt the Iraq army, on lines of old colonial troops. They did not want to make an Army which could actually control the country. As they said, when you intentions are at core rotten, your efforts are bound to fail.
Dunno, the last Sunni government wasn’t so bad.
At least compared to democracy and freedom.
More and more I think that the Iraq we all know and love needs to be divided into separate states reflecting the ethnic backgrounds of each region. But I don’t want the US to do it (nor do I think we can). And there’s the pesky problem of oil revenues
Then you really don’t have a point; the Viet Cong were not a terrorist organization. It wasn’t even just an irregular army. It maintained a shadow government even in areas it didn’t overtly control and military was divided into local force and mobile forces; the local forces being part time guerillas who would remain in their home areas being farmers by day and laying ambushes by night. The mobile forces were full time and as the name implies operated throughout the country. The fact that they fought a fixed battle was far from a moot point, it was the entire point of Ap Bac. The final phase of any successful guerilla war is when it turns conventional, and the ‘irregular’ army is able to fight and defeat the army of the government in pitched battle. That is why Ap Bac caused such a panic; it showed the ARVN could not even defeat the Viet Cong when they came out in the open and presented themselves for battle.
Then the organization you should look to be blaming isn’t the Iraqi Army. Barring some major change, the Iraqi Army will remain sub-par. It has always been sub-par. The institution that was disbanded in 2003 that had been capable of maintaining its borders and internal security wasn’t the Iraqi Army. It was the government of Saddam Hussein. Blaming the ineptitude of the current Iraqi Army on Bremer’s decision to disband it in 2003 worked as an excuse in 2003, it doesn’t work as an excuse in 2014. The truth of the matter is that the Iraqi Army in 2002 wasn’t effective to begin with. It wasn’t effective in 2003, it wasn’t effective in 1991, it wasn’t effective in 1979-88, it wasn’t effective in 1973, it wasn’t effective in 1941… seeing a pattern here?
Give me a break. How much air support does ISIS have? How advanced are their logistics? 30,000 men broke and ran from an attacking force of 800, with inferior weapons and equipment, without a fight. Maybe your expectations of how soldiers are expected to behave are lower than my, but the only thing I see here is a military force that had no intention of fighting. Air support wouldn’t have changed that.
Hmmm. About that 800 vs. 30.000 thing, Prof. Cole writes that:
The reason would be just what you’d think it’d be: The area around Mosul is largely Sunni, while the army is largely Shi’ite.
Now, having been kicked out of Mosul, the Shi’ites seem to be itching for a counteroffensive:
Both Sayyid al-Hakim, of ISCI / al-Badr, and - surprise surprise! - good ol’ Muqtada al-Sadr have offered to strike back against ISIS, and seem to be maybe sorta kinda hinting that they’ll do so even without Maliki’s and the Iraqi government’s approval.
No matter how the Shi’ite power struggle plays out, it goes without saying that Iran will do its best to keep Shi’ite infighting to a minimum, and covertly (and not-so-covertly) “coach” the upcoming Shi’ite counteroffensive.
What remains to be seen, is if Iran and the U.S. end up covertly collaborating against ISIS, as they once did - at least for a while - against the Taliban, sharing intelligence and the like. That would be… Interesting. (And, hey, maybe even a good thing. We’ll see.)
Other than that, I’m guessing - and hoping! - the U.S. sits this one out.
Ps. In any case, I cannot for the life of me imagine that ISIS will be able to take Baghdad - or, for that matter, any Shi’ite-majority city. If that happens, feel free to go “haha, Steken, you were wrong.”
The Viet Cong were clearly a terrorist organisation against the Diem government, that doesn’t de-legitimise their aims, it’s just convention in relation to how they operated. Terrorist organisations can maintain shadow governments.
In relation to what I highlighted in bold is exactly my comparison, the Iraqi Army cannot defeat ISIS in open battle, and has lost a substantial amount of territory as a result.
The point I’m making is that the military has played a significant role in social stability in Iraq, and social cohesion, once that genius Bremer decided to disband the Iraqi army, he destroyed one of the lynchpins of Iraqi identity, of which it has not been able to recover, and has hampered its effectiveness further, you can quote the previous dates of its ineptitude, but those again are external conflicts, before 2003, the Iraqi army was at least effective in maintaining internal security, and that organisation was subservient to the government of Saddam Hussein.
Then you are widening the definition of ‘terrorist organization’ to have no meaning. The Viet Cong were not setting off bombs at random or flying planes into buildings; they were overthrowing Diem’s government by military force.
If so, again I’m confused why you consider it “a moot point” that Ap Bac was a fixed battle. That was the entire point. It demonstrated that the War for Vietnam was entering its final phase; the Viet Cong were no longer hiding from ARVN in pitched battle. They were standing, fighting, and defeating the ARVN in conventional battle, so if something drastic wasn’t done to change things soon they were going to win the war.
The Iraqi Army was not a lynchpin of Iraqi identity, and all of those dates of previous ineptitude that you want to dismiss because they were external conflicts were battles against far tougher enemies than they are now fighting. The Iraqi Army has had over 10 years to get itself together. Saying the problem is its youth is absurd. How long, exactly, do you think they need before youth is no longer their main problem? 50 years? 100? You have inadvertently noted what actually held Iraq together prior to 2003 - the government of Saddam Hussein. That is what made the internal security in Iraq so effective, not the Iraqi Army. When it came to putting down real internal security threats by force that required the application of military force, Saddam didn’t send in the Army, at least not alone. The Army, or deserters from it, are often half of the internal security problem. He sent in the Republican Guard. Who do you think it was that suppressed the 1991 uprisings following Desert Storm?
nm
They did both, what part of terrorist organisation don’t you understand?
Because the battle tactics itself are not as significant as the eye-raising spectre of the ARVN being utterly incapable of mounting an effective offensive or defence, a force which was heavily trained and supplied by the US, much like the Iraqi army in recent events.
Why is it so hard for you to appreciate the fact that the Iraqi Army has ceased to be an effective fighting force due to American incompetence in the beginning of 2003, sure, the Iraqis now are to blame for their debacles, but it was you guys who dismantled the military and government apparatus and expected a capable fighting force to emerge in the middle of an insurgency, even ignoring that most experienced military officers were Sunni and were purged due to De-Baathification. Replace them with Shia or Kurdish officers and you’re not going to see the same kind of results (However poor they currently were before)
The Iraqi Army was part of the internal security force of Saddam Hussein, it had a dual role.
So they were above the ordinary foot soldiers in the Iraqi army, which is to be expected, but they were within the Military structure. They constituted a part of the Iraqi Army.
That’s assuming that the people who control it actually want to make money, build infrastructure, foster education that provides technical understanding and encourages critical thinking, and improve the lot of their citizenry all around. I’m not saying that ISIS is diametrically opposed to these sorts of goals, but it’s not a foregone conclusion that they wouldn’t prefer to simply turn off the tap, if they believe that will get them where they want to be.
Generally speaking, however, if the oil-controllers do not want to do all those things with the money, then they do earnestly wish to do . . . other things with it. Either way, though, it’s too much money for the ordinary pol/warlord/mullah to pass up. It would take a clutch of real fanatics to turn off the tap! And fanatics that fanatical are rare even in the MENA. They don’t come much more fanatical than the Wahhabis, but that has never interfered with Saudi Arabia’s exports. Iran exports too. The Taliban would have exported Afghan oil if there were any.
Am I the only one disappointed that this thread has nothing to do with the Egyptian goddess of fertility and magic?
Probably the only one to be disappointed by that as such; but some of up might be a bit disappointed, or at least wistful, that the real-life headlines that inspired the thread have nothing to do with that. 
I think we can safely assume ISIS would want to sell it to buy arms and support for their aims.
It seems to me that whenever oppressive tyrants like Hussein and Milošević are removed from power, all hell breaks loose. Tribes and sub-cultures were at each others’ throats before oppressive powers took over and kept them from fighting. Now they’re free to fight each other again and national stability crumbles.
Iraq is a lot like Yugoslavia: A multinational state cobbled together out of former Ottoman provinces after WWI, with a lot of unresolved ethnic and religious hatreds that only a strongman government could hold down. When the lid was ripped off, the pot boiled over.