Who Has The Will To Fight For Iraq?

New York Times editorial: Who’s Willing to Fight for Iraq?

Defense Secretary Ashton Carter’s recent assessment of Iraqi security forces was impolitic and true, and rarely voiced by senior officials. After the devastating loss of the Iraqi city of Ramadi to the Islamic State in May, he told CNN that while Iraqi troops vastly outnumbered the brutal extremists, they “just showed no will to fight.”

Mr. Carter’s stark judgment once again raises the question of how long the United States should continue arming and training Iraqis and dropping bombs on targets related to the Islamic State, a Sunni Muslim group also known as ISIS or ISIL. If the Iraqis don’t care enough to defend and sacrifice for their own country, then why should the United States?

The American strategy is based on building up local security forces that can back up American airstrikes by recapturing territory and then holding it. Presuming ISIS is ever defeated, no peace can be sustained if Iraqis aren’t committed to preserving it.

WNU Editor: The Kurds have proven their worth .... but support to them has been limited in order to accommodate the governments in both Turkey and Iraq who are always worried that they may end up fighting their Kurdish populations over autonomy and/or for an independent Kurdish state. Some elements of the Iraqi military have fought .... Thousands Who Run, Few Who Fight: A Journalist On Ramadi's Fall (NPR) .... but they are too few and too scattered to make a difference. There is also the question that the Iraqi Army is burnt out .... The Iraqi Army is Too Exhausted to Fight (Mitchell Prothero, Politico) .... that after a string of defeats they are now too demoralized and/or exhausted to fight. This assessment is probably true. The Iranian backed Shiite militias appear to be willing to fight, but in the battle for Tikrit they were stopped, and it was only U.S. air strikes that tipped the battle in their favor. Bottom line .... from my vantage point .... it appears that the only group that is really motivated to win in Iraq is the Islamic State .... and while I hope that my observation is completely wrong .... recent events tell me otherwise.