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| -Lurid Crime Tales- |
| Michael Yon: Moment of Truth |
| 2008-01-09 |
| A small excerpt of a long, and important, despatch. . . . I’ve seen the Iraqi Army with my own eyes. I’ve done many missions in 2005 and 2007, in many places in Iraq, along with the Iraqi Army: please believe me when I say that, on the whole, the Iraqi Army is remarkably better in 2007 and far more effective than it was in 2005. By 2007, the Iraqis were doing most of the fighting. And . . . this is very important . . . they see our Army and Marines as serious allies, and in many cases as friends. Please let the potential implications of that sink in. We now have a large number of American and British officers who can pick up a phone from Washington or London and call an Iraqi officer that he knows well—an Iraqi he has fought along side of—and talk. Same with untold numbers of Sheiks and government officials, most of whom do not deserve the caricatural disdain they get most often from pundits who have never set foot in Iraq. British and American forces have a personal relationship with Iraqi leaders of many stripes. The long-term intangible implications of the betrayal of that trust through the precipitous withdrawal of our troops could be enormous, because they would be the certain first casualties of renewed violence, and selling out the Iraqis who are making an honest-go would make the Bay of Pigs sell-out seem inconsequential. The United States and Great Britain would hang their heads in shame for a century. Alternately, in an equation in which the outcome is a stable Iraq for which they (Iraqi Police and Army officials) are stewards, the potential benefits are equally enormous. Because if Iraq were to settle down, and then a decade passes and we look back and even our most severe critics cannot deny that Iraq is a better place, a generation of Iraq’s most important leaders would have deep personal bonds with their counterparts in America and Great Britain. This could actually happen. The ultimate irony is that many of those same people who would have gotten the blame likely would be getting the credit. But somehow I doubt there’d be as much of a circle-point to share the glory. . . . |
| Posted by:Mike |
| #4 THe Iraqis still have not even come close in Logistics and Maint. Thats going to take a few years. But they are quick students in terms of operations at the battalion level and below, and in some areas they are actually able to operate cohesively at a brigade and division scale operation. Ya know what? If things continue, in about 3 years the Iraqis are going to scare the dogshit out of the Iranians - quality and quantity, schoole din the American ways of operational art, and finally having mastered logistics. |
| Posted by: OldSpook 2008-01-09 21:07 |
| #3 I don't think these friendly relations will be busted up so easily, even with a Democrat president in the WH. This is because our military leaders still snarl at the memory of the US betrayal of the ARVN. So from the get-go, and frequently thereafter, they enlightened their Iraqi counterparts as to the fickle nature of US politics. This was a warning that, with very little notice, the US military might have to pack up and go, so the Iraqis *have* to be ready to take over at any time. Forewarned is forearmed. For at least two years now, the Iraqi army has been able and ready to take over. On the day when we knew that they could, without disaster, take over, everybody, both US military and Iraqi military, breathed a sigh of relief. Everything beyond that is icing on the cake. The Iraqis have a shopping list of everything they need to become and remain a world-class military. They have been run through endless training exercises, battalion, brigade, and even division sized operations. They have military schools for enlisted, NCOs, officers, senior and general officers, and branch specialties, all run by Iraqis but on the US models. They are one of the few armies in the world that takes maintenance and logistics as seriously as it should. Probably their biggest problem right now is paperwork, bureaucracy, and interacting with the civilian government. And like the Turkish army, the Iraqi government knows that if it tries to undermine or cheat the Iraqi military, it could very well take over the country. And ironically, run it as the most honest Arab nation ever. The bottom line is that the US has created an almost living being in the Iraqi military, one unique to the middle east. And the implications of our having done so will impact the entire region for a hundred years or more. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2008-01-09 19:01 |
| #2 This dispatch is mostly about pre-ordering copies of his book, which seems like a pretty good idea. |
| Posted by: Iblis 2008-01-09 18:49 |
| #1 brits should be hanging their heads in shame after Basra (IMO) |
| Posted by: sinse 2008-01-09 17:33 |