[In] Iraq, the head of parliament's defense and security committee said Baghdad may request Russian air strikes against Islamic State on its soil soon and wants Moscow to have a bigger role than Washington in fighting the group.
Strategypage says that those criticizing the slow going of our effort in Iraq don't appreciate the difficulties of preparing Iraqis to go on the offensive by combating corruption:
American military advisors are less optimistic [about defeating ISIL in Iraq by the end of next year] mainly because the Iraqi army and police still have so many incompetent (and often corrupt) officers. Fixing that situation takes time and there is no way to speed it up dramatically. Iraqi and Western politicians and media pundits have a hard time understanding that reality.
I respect Strategypage a lot. And they have a point. Perhaps I just don't appreciate the reality as they say.
But I just don't think we are waging war in Iraq.
We've trained a number of Iraqi army units, yet with American air support directed from the front (NOTE: If we would do this--not that we are doing it right now) this isn't enough to do the job?
I don't think so.
Our inability to work with what we have rather than what we wish we had could finally do what critics of the Iraq War have wrongly blamed on the overthrow of Saddam--delivering Iraq to the Iranians (and now, Russians, too).
Are we still calling this Smart Diplomacy?
I mean, our smart diplomacy.
