Training The Enemy

Somebody really messed up bad time when it comes to Iraq, and it seems like the mistakes have just been coming in a steady stream, with no apparrent end in sight. So what are we to do? Stay the course just doesn't cut it anymore, and there seems unfortunately to be no real plan for victory. So we just hear empty assertions that we will eventually begin drawing down our forces. In time for the '06 elections, of course.

But we shouldn't, we are told, announce any kind of timetable for withdrawal, as this would embolden the enemy, who would bide their time until the appointed date. Then, all hell would break loose, and the nation of Iraq would quickly collapse, would disintegrate into armed conflict between the various factions.

Nevertheless we are assurred that we will eventually achieve victory, and then our troops will come home. Before that, however, we have to assure that the Iraqis are able to vote for their government, whatever that turns out to be, and then, perhaps most importantly, we have to insure that the new and hopefully permanent Iraqi democratic government is able to defend it's self and it's people.

Seems reasonable enough, on the surface. Yet, we have been there now for roughly two and a half years, and as of the last count, the number of Iraqis that are able to stand on their own as a fighting force number roughly one battallion-of 800 men. This out of a total of about 160,000. Ponder that for a moment. Out of all the various members of the Iraqi army, police, and security forces, only 800 of them are of professional enough calibre of training and discipline as to enable them to stand and fight without any help from the U.S. military.

It sounds crazy. We should have by now trained far more Iraqis than this. Some assert that had we received the aid from NATO that we requested along these lines, the training would have been more successful. There are just not enough American troops to do the job of training the Iraqis while conducting the bulk of the combat.

Still others would assert that as long as we are there, the Iraqis really have no incentive to fight, they would just as soon us do their fighting for them.

Both of these are valid theories, and I am sure there is a great deal of truth to them. But I dont think it quite tells the whole story. For some time I have thought there is something that seems to be missing, some answer that is just below the surface. Suddenly, it hit me just what the problem might be.

Consider back to the start of the first Gulf War, which Saddam promised would be the "mother of all wars". Iraq had something like the fourth or fifth largest military in the world at that time, and they were considered to be one of the finest fighting machines in existence at the time. Of course, by the time the fighting started, it became quickly obvious that this was more or less hyped, greatly so. The coalition lead by the U.S. under President George H.W. Bush soundly defeated Saddams army and his so-called elite Republican Guard. It was indeed a humiliating defeat, despite Saddams laughable assertions of victory, based on nothing more than the first President Bush's wise decision to not go into Baghdad to oust the dictator.

While Saddam was contained over the course of the next ten years, he survived two uprisings that lead to mass slaughter by his Republican Guard, which along with the remnants of his army he rebuildt to as great an extent as possible.Yet, his influence was pretty much limited, at least by air, over the Sunni Triangle, thanks to the U.S. enforcement fo the No-Fly Zone established by the U.N., which also passed up to seventeen resolutions that it failed to enforce against the tyrant.

After a couple of retaliatory air strikes by the Clinton administration, whatever WMD Saddam may have been in the process of building up seems to have been destroyed, or at least was very well hidden, possibly even transported to Syria. Whatever the case, this was the main concern when George W. Bush decided (whenever he actually did so) to finally oust Saddam, a process that began in March of 2003.

This fear too did not pan out, and Saddams armed forces again were quickly decimated, or fled all together from the conflict. By the time three weeks had passed, the war was seemingly over, and Saddams statue had fallen. Saddams forces-the army, the Republican Guard, and the Fedayim Saddam-had faded into the woodwork. In some cases, they were actually told to just go home. Not the most brilliant move.

Ever since then, we have been fighting an insurgency of increasing ferocity, with greater and greater casualties as time goes on. And it doesn't seem to be a unified insurgency at that. In some cases it is made up of foreign fighters, from other Arab and Muslim countries, some of which might have a connection to Al-Queda, at leat one of which might actually be a branch of Al-Queda, and some which are more or less independant of any organizational structure or loyalties.

In other cases it appears to be a mishmash of former Saddam loyalists, the Republican Guard, the Feddayim Saddam, and others who are determined to restore and maintain the Sunni hegemony over the country that Saddam had for so long provided by way of the Ba'ath Party.

There are as well Shi'ite militia forces bound and determined to avenge the heavy handed rule of the Sunnis and to avenge the atrocities committed by the Ba'athists.

And yet, from time to time, it seems that all these disparate forces have conspired to target the American military forces as the common enemy. That is, of course, when they are not targeting the average Iraqi civilian, including women and children, subjecting them to the most vile and horrific acts of bloodshed by way of such atrocous actions as suicide car bombings and even by way of assaults on funerals, weddings, and most pernicous perhaps of all, on crowded mosques in the middle of worship services.

So it is easy to see why the Bush administration insists that we have to stand up a firm and stable democracy in Iraq, one capable of defending itself, before we can even think about leaving. That is probably the only thing they have gotten right in all this mess. They were certainly wrong about the presence of WMD's. They were certainly incorrect in their assertion that we would be greeted as liberators. They were incredibly naive in believing that the cost of the war and reconstruction could be met by the profits from the proceeds of Iraqi oil revenues.

Because of all these grandiose and incredibly shortsighted assumptions, they were even wrong about the number of troops that would be needed in order to maintain order in the country after the war was over.

Worse of all, perhaps, they have been arrogantly misleading, almost to the point of being pathological liars, to the American people, about everything. The majority of people don't believe Bush any more, and have little faith in the Administration to set things right. We can ony hope for the best. But at least you would think the military would be more than capable of training the Iraqi soldiers in order to do the job at hand. So they can actually have the skills, in addition to the raw manpower, needed to protect their own country.

So what is the problem? What is taking so long to train the Iraqi military and police and security services? Why have so few as of yet been trained at a professional enough level that they are capable of standing on their own, without any help from the U.S.? Obviousy we have to adequaely train more than one division, otherwise we will be stuck there forever. In fact, logistically, it is almost impossible to leave as of now, without some kind of rear guard protection. Otherwise, were we to leave too quickly, we run the risk of actually leaving the last to leave as, to all intents and purposes, sacrificial targets. Then what? What is taking the process so long that we have inadverdantly had to bring in the Natioinal Guard and Army Reserve Units to take up the slack, and have for a significant duration of this war at least, been forced to institute a kind of what has been termed "back door draft", keeping our militasry personnel bund to their duty beyond their ordinary terms of enlistment. In some cases, for up to three terms.

Because of this, our military is stretched thin, and recruitment of new recruits is down, though it has been asserted that re-enlistment is up. And it is even unsure as to whether this is a legitimate claim. No one knows what to believe any more. For all the money, the billions of dollars, and the American blood, that has so far been spent, with no real end in sight, shouldn't there be more Iraqi soldiers trained than this? If not, why not?

Careful consideration of the circumstances and the history lead to one possible, even probabal, conclusion. The Bush Administration, and the U.S. military, actually doesn't want to train the Iraqis to be able to fight on their own-because they are afraid of them.

Now I know that will be a particularly hard pill to swallow for those who consider themselves the typical red-blooded American patriot, and particularly those who have been instilled with a belief in the spiritual destiny of America as a beacon of democracy and the guardians of the rights of mankind everywhere. But how else to explain it? The Bush Administration has been wrong about just about everything else, including such Iraqi allies as Ahmed Chalabi, who while feeding the U.S. what appears to have been false information in order to drum up support for the ouster of Saddam, at the same time seems to have been acting accordding to some reports, as an agent of Iran.

The Bush Administration is therefore now in a bind, and doesn't really have any clue as to where to turn. Obviously the Iraqis are capable of being trained by the U.S. military, and according to U.S. military standards. That is just the problem. Particularly when it now, on top of eveyhing else, seems as though the military and police forces may have in fact been infiltrated by insurgents.

Were we to proceed with the training, as the Bush administration has assurred the country and the world that we will, we may in effect be training the worse, the most powerful enemy the U.S. has ever faced. Especially if the much touted coming Iraqi parliamentary democracy ends up falling apart, and is replaced by-what?

Inevitably, whatever that might be, it will doubtless be an entity that will hold no great gratitude, and cerainy no great and abiding love, for the United States of America. It is just impossible to say what it will be, actually, though we can hazard a guess. It is not all that difficult to envision a return to Sunni rule, by way of the reemergence of the Ba'ath party. It depends on the circumstances. Or even a coalition of Ba'athists with radical Sunni clerics financed by wealthy Saudis. The more likely possibility would seem to be an Islamic theocratic government headed by the majority Shi'ites.

There is also a possibility that the entire country would just fall into chaos, and bloody civil war, with involvement by Iran, Syria, and Turkey. This could cause conflagration throughout the Middle East, in fact, and could in turn effect the security of Europe, as well as the U.S. security and interests.

Ironically, a well trained Iraqi Army might be the only thing that could precvent this tragedy, yet at the same time such an army might be exactly what would bring about a blood-thirsty, iron fisted regime as bad, or possibly even worse, than that perpetrated by Saddam Hussein.

Such an Iraqi army might, in turn, quickly become the Frankensteins monster of our own creation. The resultant outcome could indeed lead eventually to the mother of all wars.

Or the granddaddy of all disasters.