Inside the Iraqi Forces Fiasco

[Sikander]

Originally posted by Alexander's Horse


Similar puff pieces were done with the South Vietnamese army

If only the Iraqi forces were as good as Nixon era South Vietnamese forces.

[Sikander]

Originally posted by Oerdin


The administration just kind of half assed everything and then tried to forget about it. It worked for them in Afghanistan so they tried to do the same with Iraq. Sadly, it was this ignoring reconstruction and not taking the matter seriously which created most of the public dissatifaction which in turn sparked the insurgency.

The key issue that keeps coming up in various ways is the lack of troops. People who say we should have gone in with more troops are really saying we shouldn't have ever done this, because the troops simply didn't exist. Sure we could have put 300,000 men in uniform on the ground in Iraq, but many of them would have been logistic troops, we would have no reserves and no one could have been rotated out to refit / rebuild / retrain, and retention would be close to zero. To build the necessary forces would have required at least a 5 year head start, and a lot of (non-crisis) money that almost certainly would never have been forthcoming.

[Tingkai]

Originally posted by Sikander


If only the Iraqi forces were as good as Nixon era South Vietnamese forces.

Oh, the irony.

[Sikander]

Originally posted by Tingkai


Oh, the irony.

While I wrote that with a twinkle in my eye, I'm actualy serious. ARVN could easily handle the sorts of tasks necessary to police Iraq. They were even capable of much more complicated combined arms operations against another modern army. Iraq's army simply needs to conduct battalion sized operations or smaller, while showing up to work regularly. Too bad for most of it that has proven to be an excessively tall order.

[Proteus_MST]

Originally posted by Sikander


The key issue that keeps coming up in various ways is the lack of troops. People who say we should have gone in with more troops are really saying we shouldn't have ever done this, because the troops simply didn't exist. Sure we could have put 300,000 men in uniform on the ground in Iraq, but many of them would have been logistic troops, we would have no reserves and no one could have been rotated out to refit / rebuild / retrain, and retention would be close to zero. To build the necessary forces would have required at least a 5 year head start, and a lot of (non-crisis) money that almost certainly would never have been forthcoming.

According to the article it is rather the lack of materials which is a real problem or, to be more precise, the two classes society with people in bases having lots of supply and the people who do the real work which are lacking even the most basic equipment.

[Sikander]

Originally posted by Proteus_MST

According to the article it is rather the lack of materials which is a real problem or, to be more precise, the two classes society with people in bases having lots of supply and the people who do the real work which are lacking even the most basic equipment.

The article is looking at the smallest of pictures, while I'm talking about the larger picture of the campaign as whole from (mis)conception to the current day. If the U.S. had more combat forces for instance it would be the U.S. Special Forces who would be doing the training rather than a few Marines who attended a one day seminar and were declared trainers. The Special Forces have a wealth of useful experience as well as their own command (SOCOM) which would make their supply problems a lot less likely.

[Colonâ„¢]

What are the Special Forces being used for now? Afghanistan?

[Blaupanzer]

SOCOM seems to be focused on the real War on Terror, not the diversion of modifying and democratizing the entire Middle East (the current rationale for "Why are we in Iraq?"). Hunting and killing people who intend to attack westerners and the West is very clandestine most of the time. Hopefully, their concentration in this area is successful. Also, many of the training teams in Iraq are special forces. There simply aren't enough of them to meet the size requirements of the Iraqi training mission and still focus on hunting bad guys in nasty places.