In an effort to stop "green on blue" incidents where angry Afghans turn their weapons on Coalition troops, the Afghan government has gotten rid of a number of troops:
"Hundreds were sacked or detained after showing links with insurgents. In some cases we had evidence against them, in others we were simply suspicious," Defence Ministry spokesman Zahir Azimi told reporters in Kabul.
That's good. It won't stop the more common anger management issues that cause such attacks, but this is good.
And if getting rid of enemy sympathizers who have managed to get into the military is so important, perhaps we can finally put an end to the nonsense of condemning the "disbanding" of Saddam's army after we destroyed the Saddam regime. Many observers have called this a mistake that fueled the insurgency.
I say, hogwash. But I've been saying that for over 8 years, now.
One, the Iraqi army self-disbanded during the conventional phase. Indeed, we encouraged that to avoid slowing down our spearheads to handle surrendering enemy troops. "Disbanding" it later was a purely legal formality getting rid of the paper establishment.
More to the point, imagine the problems we'd have had in Iraq with "green on blue" incidents if we had a couple hundred thousand allied Iraqi troops in uniform led by "former" Baathist officers who started out with pro-Saddam sympathies. How would the spring 2004 Sadrist and Sunni offensives have worked out if so many potential hostiles were in uniform and pretending to be on our side before the enemy struck?
And God help us, our administration thinks that the "disbanding" mistake is one that shouldn't be repeated in Syria.
