Oh, come on, Ash; just because the Iraqi Army fled from an enemy they outnumbered and outgunned forty to one doesn't mean they aren't top-flight badasses.
It evokes a line from the late George Carlin's "Indian Sergeants" bit: "The Indians were good fighters; just because the started out in Massachusetts and wound up defending Malibu doesn't mean they were bad".
Perhaps it's simply a matter of....motivation:
ISIS militants raised their black flag over the central Iraqi city [or Ramadi] last Sunday, sparking questions about the effectiveness of efforts by the U.S. and Iraq to fight the terror group. Defense Secretary Ash Carter on Sunday blamed the fall partially on Iraq forces’ “will to fight.”
“They were not outnumbered. In fact, they vastly outnumbered the opposing force, and yet they failed to fight, they withdrew from the site, and that says to me, and I think to most of us, that we have an issue with the will of the Iraqis to fight ISIS and defend themselves,” Carter told CNN’s Barbara Starr in an interview that aired on Sunday’s State of the Union.
Carter said the U.S. and coalition forces could provide Iraqi soldiers with all the training and equipment they need, but they can’t be given the willingness to fight ISIS, which is integral in driving out the militants.
“We can’t make this happen by ourselves, but we can assist it to happen, and we are counting on the Iraqi people to come behind a multi-sectarian government in Baghdad,” Carter said.
Which you have no means of forcing them to do because your treacherous boss withdrew all of our forces three and a half years ago. Leaving a large residual U.S. military presence in Iraq - as we still have in Korea, for example, over sixty years after the end of that war - whether the Iraqi government liked it or not would have both kept them in line, aborted ISIS in its jihadist cradle, and kept the Iranians from vassalizing the country. But he didn't, they weren't, they weren't, and they weren't, precisely as King Hussein intended.
Yes, it absolutely was deliberate on the part of Barack Obama, and that's what makes his "Iraqization" fraud such an insult to our collective intelligence. The Iraqi Army, outside of its Shiite elements, has no reason to fight the Islamic State. They're not fighting for their country because their country barely exists anymore. Sunni Iraqi soldiers have no reason to fight their fellow Sunnis on behalf of the Shiites in Tehran and Baghdad. The wonder is that the Iraqi "Army" even has any Sunni members left, and that meager remnant will evaporate, either to the tall grass, the grave, or to ISIS's ranks. And the only reason The One keeps this fraud going is as cover for his ongoing efforts to equip the Islamic State with all the state-of-the-art U.S. military equipment their billions don't have to buy, just as he's all but building the mullahs' nuclear stockpile for them.
Captain Ed neatly sums it up:
At this point....the....options available look very unpalatable. McCaffrey’s right that adding a few thousand American troops back in the theater wouldn’t suffice; that would depend on a strong Iraqi military, too. We’d need to go back into Iraq as an occupying force and break ISIS completely, all the way into Syria and Raqqa as well, and then start over from scratch at rebuilding the Iraqi army. Even if that was a good idea [which it was the first time and is now], this president will never do it. Unfortunately, none of the other Sunni nations appear ready [or able] to do it either, which means the “degrade and destroy” rhetoric is just an empty threat.
It's not just an empty threat, Ed; it's a lie. And it always has been. Once that truth is generally accepted - which it will be, if ever, far, far too late to avert disaster - the course of action will - or would have been - clear.
But then we have no more "will to fight" than the Iraqi Army does, now do we?
UPDATE: Once again, only our enemies are telling the truth:
The United States has done "nothing" to help Iraq's army battle jihadists in Ramadi, according to a senior Iranian general involved in the fight against the Islamic State group.
Qassem Suleimani, the Revolutionary Guards' commander of foreign operations, hit out at Washington after Pentagon chief Ashton Carter said Iraqi forces "failed to fight" in Ramadi, which has fallen to IS.
"Mr. [Barack] Obama, what is the distance between Ramadi and Al-Asad base where U.S. planes are based?" Suleimani said in a speech late Sunday in the southern province of Kerman carried by state news agency IRNA.
"How can you be in that country under the pretext of protecting the Iraqis and do nothing? This is no more than being an accomplice in a plot," said Suleimani.
In addition to your own, General.
The world really has turned upside-down.
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