{"id":181509,"date":"2016-06-05T19:59:00","date_gmt":"2016-06-06T00:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2016\/06\/05\/so-not-surprised\/"},"modified":"2016-06-05T19:59:00","modified_gmt":"2016-06-06T00:59:00","slug":"so-not-surprised","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2016\/06\/05\/so-not-surprised\/","title":{"rendered":"So Not Surprised"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It turns out that our attempt to create a viable Iraqi military <a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/r-exclusive-us-falters-in-campaign-to-revive-iraqi-army-officials-say-2016-6\">has largely failed<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">A 17-month U.S. effort to retrain and reunify Iraq&#8217;s regular army has failed to create a large number of effective Iraqi combat units or limit the power of sectarian militias, according to current and former U.S. military and civilian officials.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">Concern about the shortcomings of the American attempt to strengthen the Iraqi military comes as Iraqi government forces and Shi\u2019ite militias have launched an offensive to retake the city of Falluja from Islamic State. Aid groups fear the campaign could spark a humanitarian catastrophe, as an estimated 50,000 Sunni civilians remain trapped in the besieged town.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">The continued weakness of regular Iraqi army units and reliance on Shi\u2019ite militias, current and former U.S. military officials said, could impede Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi\u2019s broader effort to defeat Islamic State and win the long-term support of Iraqi Sunnis. The sectarian divide between the majority Shi&#8217;ite and minority Sunni communities threatens to split the country for good.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">Retired U.S. Lieutenant General Mick Bednarek, who commanded the U.S. military training effort in Iraq from 2013 to 2015, said the Iraqi army has not improved dramatically in the past eight months. He blamed a variety of problems, from a lack of Iraqis wanting to join the military to the resistance of some lower-level Iraqi officers to sending units to American training.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This is not a surprise.<\/p>\n<p>Iraq was always a country loosely stitched together by the diktat of the new colonial rulers of the region following the First World War, and the invasion knocked Humpty Dumpty off of that wall, and we cannot put him back together again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It turns out that our attempt to create a viable Iraqi military has largely failed: A 17-month U.S. effort to retrain and reunify Iraq&#8217;s regular army has failed to create a large number of effective Iraqi combat units or limit the power of sectarian militias, according to current and former U.S. military and civilian officials.Concern &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[987,1063,1006,1098],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-181509","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fail","category-iraq","category-military","category-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181509"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=181509"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181509\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=181509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=181509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=181509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}