OT: a serious question about Iraq

This is just my opinion. These people have been dependant upon the government to take care of them for a long time. It will take a while for the spirit of freedom and ingenuity to set in. It will take a while for the fear and distrust of government to subside. Unfortunately the government hasn't helped in reducing any of the angst these people have regarding their lives. There are many different factions fighting for control and using the commoners as pawns in their quest for power. These people are yet to have any loyalty to anyone lest their choice is not the one who wins. If they choose wrong then they will be dead also.

What all this means is 1) those who are being trained are being killed before they can begin performing their duties, 2) they get trained then desert the military/police forces and join the insurgents, 3) recruits are hard to find because there is no clear-cut authority flexing its muscle and holding violence in check. For some reason the Americans are being prevented from doing anything drastic that would put a hurt on the insurgents and unfortunately that is making them even bolder.

Until the current Iraqi government establishes itself as the authority of that country by whatever means there won't be any peace and we will continue to be sitting ducks to be taken out by CNN sponsored terrorist snipers. The Defense Department is going to have to be given the green light to show we mean business soon.

IMHO, from what I have personally observed of a number of non-US Armed Forces is that they should not be compared to what we think an armed force should be. The troops have very little discipline, are not technically able to run sophisticated equipment, are apt to bug out at the earliest oppurtunity.

Oh, Tom, you got that right. While in Korea, our regiment was down the road from an allied company from a friendly southeast Asian nation (unnamed to protect the innocent) where I went daily for a couple of months, honchoing a quonset-building team, building some of their housing. They were nice folks indeed, but as soldiers I think a bunch of American boy scouts would have outclassed them by a wide margin. They (or their company commander) didn't believe in training, and in the one longish field exercise during the winter, they stayed about a day and a half, then the CO thought it was too cold, so they went back to their nice warm barracks. I'm sure that if the balloon went up, they'd have lasted about an hour.

I think you're on the right track...lots of recruits have been killed by the insurgents, even those trying to enlist have been hit by car bombs at the recruiting stations, and as you say, they'd really like to know if they're on the winning side before commiting to swear their loyalty to any side....and I can understand the spot they're in.

Apparently when the US moved into Iraq, Rumsfeld kicked the first 3 levels of commanders out of the Iraqi armed forces to make sure no one loyal to Sadam was left. It was recommended to him that he only kick out the first level but no one can tell Rumsfeld anything. Basically no one with any military skills was left and the rest is history.

There is also the problem of the three (or more?) competing factions. The minority group was the ones that got the "goodies" under Saddam and apparently they are fighting like hell to keep it. They had most of the training, most of the money and most of the guns and are not wanting any peace there.

Killing Americans and other folks beats the shit out of herding goats or camels which they are afraid might happen under a Kurd/Shiite leadership. And they are probably right.

Ron

As has already been said the Iraq army were mostly Saddam's minority Sunni population, who have no oil under their traditional lands and are now fighting for their survival. The Kurds who were sadly suppressed by Saddam for years have most of the oil and just want to get on with life. The majority Shia to the south have the balance of the oil and also want to get their lives together after Saddam. Also they are of a different Muslim sect than the Sunni so they don't get along.

• One feeling is shared by these very independent people is they wanted

• the western forces to be gone very soon after Saddam was removed. (Learning English or American isn't one of their priorities and they certainly aren't about to convert to the Christian religious club.)

They are very smart people, why waste your own on protection when the USA and British are willing to waste their lives attempting to maintain peace. In the opinion of many what they need is a civil war to resolve their internal problem, but as the USA found many years that's a brutal way to resolve a political problem. It may be late to separate the Sunni and Shia into two countries, although the Kurds could probably be split off. Of course the Shia could join their Iranian cousins, but the USA couldn't stand for that.

Also Turkey will not accept an independent Kurdish state.

I think you are right about Turkey, but what is the deal there? I know there are lots of Kurds in Iran, Iraq and Turkey. They have been oppressed for centuries by Iran and Iraq but is that true for Turkey also? Is Turkey that afraid of a Kurdistan seeking revenge on them?

The main problem is we did not quickly establish complete control of Iraq, and nothing matters nearly as much as control, especially in a highly authoritarian society where expressing the wrong loyalty can get you killed. With nobody in complete control, where should Iraqi soldiers place their loyalty? The U.S. military? The national government? Their ethnic tribe? The local warlord?

Even some of the most ardent neoconservative advocates of the 2003 war are now critical of the way Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld have handled the war:

Richard Perleman:

"I think if I had been delphic, and had seen where we are today, and people had said, 'Should we go into Iraq?', I think now I probably would have said, 'No, let's consider other strategies for dealing with the thing that concerns us most, which is Saddam supplying weapons of mass destruction to terrorists'."

Kenneth Adelman:

"I just presumed that what I considered to be the most competent national security team since Truman was indeed going to be competent. They turned out to be among the most incompetent teams in the postwar era. Not only did each of them, individually, have enormous flaws, but together they were deadly, dysfunctional."

I doubt that Turkey is afraid of anybody, but they're among the many who have repressed the Kurds, and ancient Kurdistan did extend into modern-day Turkey.

Sometimes the highly imperfect status quo borders, imposed by Westerners who were totally ignorant or insensitive of local ethnic groups, are better than any alternatives.

I just noticed your newsreader stripped the OT: from the Subject line. This is a well known bug in MSOE you may want to keep an eye on in the future for the benefit of those who try to filter these conversations out.