It is also the case that hundreds (at least) of Iraqis loyal to their government died in the defense and fall of Ramadi. It is pretty rich for the American secretary of defense, who supervises a strategy designed to keep American servicemen out of the fight on the ground, to claim that the Iraqis lack fighting spirit. What about American fighting spirit? Our airstrikes are ineffectual, hampered by the same strict rules of engagement that held troops back in Afghanistan during 2009 and 2010. Our special operations troops are forbidden from leaving their bases to coordinate air support for the Iraqis, thus preventing the kind of campaign waged in Afghanistan in 2001, where a handful of American advisers partnered with the Northern Alliance achieved a stunning and swift victory over the Taliban.
We refuse to share any risk with our Iraqi partners, and then call them cowards in public when they fail. As a strategic matter, who will want to fight alongside us in the future after a display as pathetic as this?
In Brussels, General Dempsey had this to add to his witty putdown of the men actually doing the fighting and dying in Iraq: “But I said then, and I reiterate now, there may be tactical exchanges—some of which go the way of Iraqi security forces and others which go the way of ISIL. But the coalition has all the strategic advantages over time.” It is a strange sort of general who congratulates himself for maintaining the “strategic advantage” in the face of what most people would consider to be a string of major defeats. And it is a strange sort of strategy that is based on an expectation that, “over time,” we will have any friends left, if our leaders continue to find it politically expedient to belittle allies after sending them out to die alone. The only thing being degraded in the campaign against the Islamic State is American prestige.
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