Our big, fun Iraq discussion thread

[JRB]

Great job on screwing up the one detail of pride for your generation that you tried to hang your hat on as a way of maligning a younger generation, and the generation who apparently doesn't "get it" had to remind you of what it actually is.

I'm sure he'll have some tangential excuse like there was some prototype MIA/KIA version that flew first but us youngin Gen-Xers and Xennials weren't around for that. The guy will do a Summer Olympics worth of mental gymnastics to avoid admitting ignorance or error on his part.

@WeepingAngel nailed it on the cultural motivation to avoid losing face, and I can't figure out how that guy could get that twisted into talking about Lil' Kim.

Otherwise, great commentary guys. It's clear that while I'm there now, a lot of P-F have significantly more experience and insight into this region than I do.

[Stephanie B]

WWI and WWII were won in the sense that the opponent nation states cease fighting against us and abandoned the short term monstrous ideologies that drove them to act as they did.

At the risk of large-scale thread drift, what were the "monstrous ideologies" that caused the First World War?

From what I've read, the war began from foolishness in the Balkans, almost exactly as foreseen by Otto Bismarck nearly thirty years before.

[Glenn E. Meyer]

At the risk of large-scale thread drift, what were the "monstrous ideologies" that caused the First World War?

From what I've read, the war began from foolishness in the Balkans, almost exactly as foreseen by Otto Bismarck nearly thirty years before.

Should have clarified that , I meant WW2 for that. Oops.

[Stephanie B]

The problem with nation building in Iraq (and I suspect in other ME "nations") is that your typical "Iraqi" does not define himself as Iraqi. I actually have first hand experience with this phenomena on the ground in Iraq working with Shia and Sunni "politicians" and Sheiks. In my experience - the Iraqis I dealt with identified with their family first, then their tribe, then their religion (Shia or Sunni version of Islam) - in fact many not that religious - and did not really identify as Iraqi until last. That is one reason they struggle to develop any type of successful centralized government institutions such as government or military. That is why the government and military are so corrupt - they see the resources as being more important to their family, tribe, etc. and not so much as central Iraqi property.

Something for which we have Mark Sykes and Francois Picot to thank, for drawing a bunch of lines on a map of the region without apparently understanding who lived where.

[Glenn E. Meyer]

WWI - more a set of Imperial white man's burden and an idiot kaiser (Hmmm?). Total miscalculation on everyone's part. Racism and imperialism for the victors in the Middle East and Asia. Despite babbling about all those good values, they told, for example, Ho to kiss off for Viet Nam (and we know how that worked out).

[pooty]

...
If you look at the countries that primarily border Iran it would be Iraq and Afghanistan. Iran already has a huge presence in Iraq due to the Shiite population. My guess, being an accomplished military strategist would be that Afghanistan would be the next country to get a major Iranian insurgency. Iran is providing economic aid to Afghanistan presently. The two countries do a fair amount of trade and Iran controls the Afghan/Iranian border. Although Afghanistan is primarily Sunni the fact that so many US troops are there would probably have some influence on Iranian efforts to win over the Muslim population and force the US out.

The Shia there are an ethnic minority that supports US allied government forces. This government, backed by US forces, prevents the Pashtun Taliban from ethnically cleansing those Shia, which has happened at least twice in the last century. If you've seen pictures of the Afghan army there's always a bunch of chinky eyed soldiers, those guys are the Shias. Believe me they don't want the us leaving anytime soon.

Do you mean something like the setup Saddam had there before he started amassing all those WMD's.

I dunno if you're joking around but hell no I don't think we should have them ruled by a dictator that wages ethnic cleansing campaigns against them when they rebel.

[Stephanie B]

Trump is now publicly threatening sanctions on Iraq if they ask us to leave.

This administration does not have some secret and careful plan behind closed doors. They have impulses and Twitter.

And very few friends. Trump's been openly pissing in the pool when it comes to relations with most of our allies. If we get into a really hot war with Iran, who is going to fight with us? The Brits? Maybe. The Saudis? Hah. The Russians?

Trump is now threatening to bomb cultural sites, places that have no military significance. I don't see how openly advocating the commission of war crimes is advancing our interests, even with Pompeo's tapdancing around the issue

[pooty]

Finally, you cannot break Iraq into three parts of Shia, Sunni, and Kurds without taking into account the tribes. In some cases, the tribe boundaries cross not only political boundaries but "religious" ones also.

All right then what does the endstate look like? What OIF are we on now like OIF XIV ?! More OIFs than 80s horror movie sequels. How many tribes cross boundaries like 10-15% ? I got two words for them: RE/MAX. Make them move so we can have some peace in the middle east.

[GardoneVT]

Dude....I don't even know where to start. The capabilities brought by our fleet of B52s today is in a different league compared to the capabilities that B52s brought in the 60s.

Just because they have a token number of somewhat modern fighters on top of their larger amount of obsolete fighters, which they can barely keep flying as-is and have no industry to fall back on in wartime to fix that (unlike us), and might get a lucky shot with an old beyond-service-life missile (if it even fires), doesn't mean that their military poses any significance of more than a speed bump.

You've really got to get a better argument than, "well we lost 1500 soldiers in Desert Storm, and we have B52s" to why their military is some sort of magical fucking gem that would perform 4 decades ahead of where it's actually capable.

The Iranian military isn’t some gimpy remnant of the 1970s. Seeing as how they fought Iraq to a standstill way back when Saddam was an ally, clearly the “weapons sanctions” did precisely fuck-all to the Iranian military.
So what their hardware’s old. Wars are fought and won by people.

“Machines don't fight wars.... You must get into the minds of humans. That's where the battles are won.”
-Col. John Boyd, USAF.

So you’ll forgive me for rejecting the bullshit notion we’ll steamroll the Iranians overnight because we have shinier equipment.

[TGS]

The Iranian military isn’t some gimpy remnant of the 1970s.

Well, yeah, actually, they are.

Seeing as how they fought Iraq to a standstill way back when Saddam was an ally, clearly the “weapons sanctions” did precisely fuck-all to the Iranian military.
So what their hardware’s old. Wars are fought and won by people.

“Machines don't fight wars.... You must get into the minds of humans. That's where the battles are won.”
-Col. John Boyd, USAF.

So you’ll forgive me for rejecting the bullshit notion we’ll steamroll the Iranians overnight because we have shinier equipment.

The Iranians used overwhelming masses of human waves to fight Iraq to a standstill, and both countries were similarly equipped military wise. How's that apply to them fighting a conventional war with us?

You have to write something that makes logical sense other than quotes taken out of context if you want to keep writing this dumb shit and not sound like the complete buffoon you've entrenched yourself as over the last few years. Or you could start by addressing what I've already corrected you on, instead of constantly tap dancing around arguments and presenting different, nonsensical points with every post.

Oh, that's right, you can't, because you're a fucking twit.