Think about the Islamic State group’s attack on Mosul in June 2014: 1,500 fighters caused 60,000 Iraqi soldiers and policemen we had trained to flee. [emphasis added]
We pulled all of our forces out of Iraq by the end of 2011. We weren't there to train Iraqis or to see warning signs of Iraqi security force deterioration. Good God, I was practically begging the Obama administration to re-engage in Iraq.
Most importantly, without our presence Iraqi military leadership went from being reasonably proficient at fighting and holding units together to being political hacks loyal to Baghdad who allowed their units to become mobs of leaderless men.
In addition, you don't train a soldier and put him on a shelf, ready for when needed. It is a continuous process of training new soldiers as trained soldiers leave the service, maintaining existing skills of soldiers already trained, and training larger and larger units in operating effectively. We weren't training them any more.
Really, you'd be shocked at how fast I lost my usable military skills when I left the service.
And third, Iraqi training even before our troops left was really minimal. Six or seven weeks of army training--less than my own basic training--does not create an infantryman or gunner or whatever. We called that being "trained" to fight in the Iraqi army but would never call anyone fresh out of boot camp trained. It is really just the beginnings of being a tactically proficient soldier--which is the main point of the author's article.
Again, when I was in basic training our armed forces were engaged in combat with Iranian forces in the Persian Gulf. The rumor ran around (planted by the cadre, I assume) that if war broke out we'd be sent to war with our drill sergeants leading us. I quickly quashed that rumor by telling fellow trainees that it was insane to think that the Army would send a bunch of barely trained recruits into battle. Absent an invading army closing in on southern Missouri, that would never happen.
I don't mean to be picky about an otherwise solid argument about the need to train troops to a level of skill that makes them willing to fight.* And yes, despite a new focus on conventional warfare I'd keep the new Army Security Force Assistance Brigades (SFABs) designed to train allied troops. But people so easily overlook the fact that we won the Iraq War, so objecting to mischaracterizations of what happened in Iraq is necessary.
When ISIL struck in June 2014, the Iraqi forces in northern Iraq were neither trained nor led. Of course they collapsed and ran. And that should have been the point of the Mosul illustration, which would tightly reinforce the argument that we should prepare allied forces to fight and win.
*And citing S.L.A. Marshall should be used with caution given that his reporting of American troops (in Men Against Fire) not firing their weapons in World War II has been questioned if not debunked. I would not cite him under the circumstances. Although I have no problem in believing, just like fighter aces inflict the vast majority of air kills despite small numbers, that ground forces have similar situations that lead a relative few to do the most damage in direct fire ground combat. [UPDATE: Although infantry comparisons to fighter pilots suffer from the fact that crew served infantry weapons are far more powerful than the weapons the riflemen have--which is a different situation than the common planes of fighter pilots. I wonder if we have data on tank crew kills which would be a better comparison to fighter aces?]
UPDATE: Of course, running won't be an alternative to dying if the enemy has the ability to pursue. Then you run and die.
