Patrick Lang posted the following earlier in the week. He was DIAs Middle East specialist, among other things.
“Pat - My folks were loading magazines last I checked. Just texted them. Firefight was on outskirts of city. Irbil will probably hold, but they’ll probe Duhok too. Their MO is lightning penetration of Pesh lines, which has been successful. They attack every few miles, break the lines, then pince together and mop up. Hopeful enough heavy equipment has dropped in so that won’t be the case. Also, they’ve learned to spread their forces to be less vulnerable to air. Lots of drones would be helpful here.”
The Kurds don’t have an answer for the Islamic States speed - or for their tanks and artillery. Lang said today that the air strikes will compel IS to make an all out push on Irbil.
A story on CNN I think mentioned, in passing, that the IS folks have nabbed some M1s from Iraqi stocks–I didn’t realize we had given them any, actually!–and are even using them. Which is sort of freaky.
They overran three Iraqi divisions and captured almost all of their equipment.
They’ll probably find the older tanks more useful though. None of the soldiers fighting under the IS banner have trained with the M1, and none of their technicians will know how to repair one.
I believe we sold them the same kind we sold the Egyptians. M1s without the DU armor.
ISIS won’t be able to use them a lot. M1s consume ridiculous amounts of fuel, even for a MBT, and it uses a jet turbine as an engine, so it’s not like a regular diesel mechanic will do you any good.
Maliki basically replaced the officer corps of the army we built him with loyal but incompetent toadies (not to say that the guys we trained weren’t varsity, but they were still better). The problem is that “Iraq” as a nation is a terrible idea, and everybody knows it. It’s hard to get someone to die for their country when they don’t really believe in it.
That meant that all the fancy weapons we gave them were deserted on the battlefield. Meanwhile, the peshmerga is probably a fine light infantry force, but they’re totally outmatched against heavy weapons, which ISIS has because of the above problem. To make things worse, because nobody wants to confront reality about Iraq being a shitty idea for a country, the US wouldn’t give the peshmerga heavy weapons, because it would have undermined the idea of an Iraqi army. So, the Kurds are desperate for US heavy weapons to defeat the US heavy weapons that ISIS has because the Iraqi army basically left them on the battlefield.
If the North stabilizes, I expect that ISIS turns toward Baghdad. Still, that’s a really tough nut to crack, because that’s all about urban warfare, and the majority Shiite population is seeing what ISIS is doing to anyone who isn’t die-hard Sunni, and they will fight to the death, because there is no other choice. At which point, I think it’s only a matter of time before Iran jumps in with tacit US approval. Which goes to show how crazy this situation is when the US and Iran are basically getting in bed over this.
Long term, it’s crazier. We basically need Iran to rebuild Assad, so he can wipe out Isis in his own borders. I think the Shiites and Kurds, with Iran and Turkeys help and US air support, goes after them in Iraq.
ISIS was the reason the US didn’t really want to help the rebels in Syria. You might argue that we could have aided the “moderate” rebels, but it’s really difficult to figure out who is who. And, there was evidence that what stuff we were sending was being seized by ISIS anyway.
I think that was predictable. Weak states generally fall back on patronage to ensure loyalty. It’s also a reflection of the tribal culture in Iraq. As one of my friends one explained, if you my cousin come to me (wearing a suicide vest) and ask me to let you through the security coridon… I have to do it. To go against your tribe, it simply isn’t done. Nor, if you were insulted or injured would you go through the government for redress. You would turn to your tribe. This was doubly true in the aftermath of the invasion, the state no longer had any real hold over society.
The problem is that “Iraq” as a nation is a terrible idea, and everybody knows it. It’s hard to get someone to die for their country when they don’t really believe in it.
Nations are certainly a reflection of culture and geography, but they’re also ideas - and ideas can die. We destroyed the idea of an Iraq when we invaded.
To your broader point, this seems like reality knocking on the administrations door and saying you were wrong, you were wrong about everything. All their hopes and dreams, all their efforts to bring the Middle East into a new era of liberal tolerance brought them to this point. Of course it wouldn’t have happened without the Iraq War but president can’t escape his culpability in all of this.
Iraq as a centralised nation is. As something more like, er, America…
Meanwhile, the peshmerga is probably a fine light infantry force, but they’re totally outmatched against heavy weapons
The Peshmerga have lots of heavy equipment. Again, the problem is not that they can’t fight IS, but that they don’t coordinate with the Sunni Arab forces. They want ammunition for the weapons they have.
Long term, it’s crazier. We basically need Iran to rebuild Assad, so he can wipe out Isis in his own borders.
…
No. Absolutely not, unless you want to see the Gulf nations throw up their hands and send their armies in. And Turkey would get involved, and…
As you argue that the FSA and the refugees they protect can’t be seen as moderates, magically.
The entire problem there was you didn’t send the weapons they needed!
Hm, I’m recalling 1975, when the North Vietnamese rolled over an ARVN that was equipped with scads of fancy US gear, all of which ended up in Hanoi’s TO&E, along with Saigon, oops, Ho Chi Minh City. In the vein of leading horses to water, etc., it’s very hard to build an army out of people who really don’t have a central core to build on.
They fought well because of the US presence and the camaraderie they had built up with us. When we were gone, there was less than zero devotion to the corrupt regime in Saigon. So yeah, we did withdraw support, but if they don’t have a desire to fight for their country, we can’t give that to them.
Well, one could argue that ideology taken to extremes is indistinguishable from what we describe as religious extremism. The common denominator I guess is “extreme.” Of course, one person’s extremism is another person’s orthodoxy.
