My take on O's latest Commissar of Defense continues to evolve. (1) He's seemingly either oblivious to or okay with his superiors feeling up his wife....
....(2) he's a wind-up toy soldier when it comes to emptying Gitmo, and (3) he's really, really clueless about the Iraqi "army":
The U.S. Secretary of Defense called out Baghdad Wednesday to send more recruits to American-run training camps, as Iraq struggles to battle the Islamic State group with a weakened military.
Plans to train some 24,000 Iraqi security forces by the fall are falling short, as only enough trainees for 7,000 troops and 2,000 "anti-terrorist forces" have enrolled for training, Defense chief Ashton Carter said while speaking before the House Armed Services Committee.
"As I've told Iraqi leaders, while the United States is open to supporting Iraq more than we already are, we must see a greater commitment from all parts of the Iraqi government," Carter said.
Commissar Carter and his grinning boss are clearly not listening to the Iraqi Prime Minister the latter personally installed last summer, because Haidar al-Abadi appears to understand the reality on the ground in Iraq a helluva lot better than Carter and Obama do. To wit: There is no "Iraqi army" because there is no "Iraq". Six thousand Iraqi troops didn't flee one hundred and fifty Islamic State fighters in Ramadi because they were ill-equipped or insufficiently trained; they fled because they didn't want to fight. And the only reason they've got even nine thousand recruits on this go-round is most likely because joining the Iraqi "army" will provide them food, shelter, and a bit of pay, little or none of which they'd have otherwise.
In other words, it's a de facto "workfare" program with a nifty uniform thrown in.
But as soon as these new recruits are trained and then deployed and then go up against ISIS, they will turn, break, and run in terror just like all those "Iraqi soldiers" who came before them, and for the exact same reasons.
If the idea is to crush the Islamic State, training wave after wave of "weak horse" "Iraqi soldiers" is a complete, masturbatory waste of time. If the idea is to crush the Islamic State, Operation Iraqi Freedom II is the only way to go, because it's the only thing that will work.
If the idea is to let the Islamic State run wild while pretending to be resisting them, then "Iraqi" workfare will suffice.
And who does Ashton Carter remind me of?
Forrest Gump, who once said: "Iraq is like a box a chocolates; you always know what you're gonna get, but you convince yourself of the mystery anyway."
UPDATE: Uh-oh, the "Q-word" has been broached:
Defense Intelligence Agency Director Lieutenant-General Vincent R. Stewart believes Iraq has become a "quagmire" but ordered that word stricken from his prepared Capitol Hill testimony, Fox News reports.
Fox's James Rosen obtained internal documents that showed Stewart agreed with staff analysts who used the term "quagmire" in regard to America's fight against the Islamic State (ISIS). Other members of his staff, however, argued that the word is "too political," and shouldn't be included in his public remarks.
Too accurate, you mean.
A quagmire is defined as a difficult situation to get out of, Rosen notes, and it is particularly problematic for the United States in regard to war because it often was applied to the Vietnam War.
Lessee: Only technically fighting - check; Fighting to lose, not to win - check; American Left sides passionately with the enemy - check; Quagmire presided over by a "fundamentally transformative" Democrat POTUS - check.
How's that for an Obama legacy? Being the man that finally, really turned Iraq into another Vietnam. He really will go down in history.
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