The Iraqi government's need for American troops would "dramatically go down" in three to six months if the United States accelerated the process of equipping and arming Iraq's security forces, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said Wednesday.
The head of Iraq's Shiite Muslim-led government defended his country's independence and sovereignty and called on U.S. leaders to show faith in his ability to lead.
First of all, training light infantry at the pointy end of the stick was the absolute best way to build an army during an insurgency and terror fight. Logistics and heavy weapons take longer to achieve proficiency. Crawl, walk, run is the proper sequence.
Second, as an independent and sovereign state, why does Maliki need us to buy heavy weapons? Iraq has oil revenue. Even though it is not enough to outright buy all the weapons he may want, surely the oil in the ground is good collateral for loans. Borrow the money from Europeans and Sunni Arab states. This would get Iraq the weapons that Maliki says he must have.
It will also encourage a little more concern over not wasting the money than outright gifts will inspire. Plus, it will get foreigners to have a stake in Iraq's future under democratic rule. Recall how France and Russia went to bat for Saddam to try and keep those loans good.
I think I called for this more than three years ago though I haven't searched back in the ancient archives for a reference. I didn't specifically talk about weapons purchases, but the broad idea was the same.
Give the vaunted international community something to care about that is near and dear to their hearts. Money talks. It bought Saddam friends. Surely it can get the Shias a little bit of that loyalty.
UPDATE: British Lieutenant General Lamb highlights exactly what I wrote in this post in response to a press question about whether the Iraqis needed more heavy equipment:
If I look back to the British counterinsurgency, probably even the American counterinsurgency approach before we entered this particular campaign, the sort of equipments you went for were light, highly deployable systems; they weren't main battle tanks, they weren't armored vehicles, they weren't a surfeit of ISR systems. We've adjusted and adapted. Our initial cut of equipment probably to the Iraqi army was based upon our understanding of the insurgency and the internal needs of that army.
Where do they stand right now? They have an FMS of over $7 billion. They've got the ability to buy the equipment, and they're doing that; they're proceeding on that basis, and therefore they can get the equipment and they can get the weapons that they want that suits their needs. And we'll help them get there. Where we started off and where we are to now, we've adapted and adjusted. If we could turn the clock back and see things as they are today, maybe three years ago we might have seen how we might have equipped them slightly differently. But it was done, in my view, correctly, balanced on the situation of the day. And right now, Prime Minister Maliki, his minister of defense, his minister of the interior, have got the money, they've got the authority, and they've got the wherewithal to get on and buy whatever they need as they see fit to defend this nation as they want, and we'll help them do that.
I would add only one more thing in light of the budding line of criticism that we're seeing now. We actually started on a process of building a small Iraqi army of 40,000 to be the cadre of a larger army. The assumption was that light Iraqi Civil Defense Corps forces (later called National Guard and later incorporated as the even number divisions of the Iraqi army) and police would suffice for local security. The new army was to be built up to handle external threats. As the insurgency built up, this assumption collapsed and we changed our focus to building an Iraqi army to fight the war we had and not to repel an invasion.
It will take years for the Iraqis to get heavy equipment, train their troops to use and maintain the equipment, and train to use the equipment. The Iraqis will win the war with the military they have and with our support it is the right army for the job.
Next plastic turkey, please.
