Iraq - Another Exercise In Futility

There is a reason why strong despots are (were?) the rule in the Middle East; they kept a lid on the Islamic nut cases that wanted to impose Sharia law on everyone. History will decide if the stupidest thing we've done in the last 100 years was to depose Saddam Hussein.

And now that they're killing each other in droves again, do we want to go back? Invest more lives, more treasure in the Muslim trailer park? We invested over 4,000 lives and $25 billion in rebuilding the Iraqi security forces so they could take care of themselves. For what?

The American Conservative has a compelling article on why the Iraqi security forces- some 900,000 men - has folded before an ISIS invasion of no more than 50,000. Entire battalions (63 so far) have melted away before the fundamentalist onslaught. Tens of billions of dollars of military equipment were abandoned and are now being used by terrorists.

The reasons? Culture and corruption.

Culture - it's how they have been socialized for centuries. Iraqis are not Americans and will never be. They are not Christians nor have they been exposed to Christian values. They do not think like we do and they do not act like we do. It is insanity to train them like we do.

...loyalty was the biggest factor in the Iraqi failures. After their own families, the soldiers and leaders were loyal to their tribes and then their religion, he said. “Iraq as a nation falls at the bottom of the list. Combine this with lack of cohesion, unity, loyalty, and camaraderie among themselves, and you have an organization that will disintegrate under pressure,”

Corruption - Bakeesh is a way of life in the Middle East and under Islamic law, rape isn't such a bad thing either.

Leaders looked out for themselves first by making side deals involving food, water, and even electricity if they were sitting on top of a generator. I got the first two battalion commanders I worked with fired for corruption that involved taking money out of soldier’s salaries and the rape of local Sunni women by the Shia soldiers. I understand what we consider corrupt in our culture was not in theirs, and I was learning to live with it. But I told them if it starts directly involving the welfare of their men, then I would come after them.

There's more than enough blame to go around. Our generals certainly may have had a hand in it also as they apparently were more concerned about greasing their own careers rather than reporting the facts.

“Claims by Petraeus, Dempsey, and other U.S. generals of Iraqi effectiveness were always exaggerated or false,” said (Ret.) Col. Doug Macgregor, an author and Army consultant who served in the first Gulf War. “The generals were simply cultivating their Bush administration sponsors in pursuit of further promotion.”

And we're inviting the same kind of failure in Afghanistan.

Urkel Bombs Erbil

AN F-18 drops guided munitions

We're back in the game?

The United States dropped laser-guided bombs on ISIS artillery in Iraq on Friday, the Pentagon said — the beginning of airstrikes threatened a day earlier by President Barack Obama.

The bombs, 500 pounds each, were dropped by two Navy F-18 fighter jets near Erbil, the strategically important city that serves as the Kurdish capital, and where the United States has a consulate. ISIS was using the artillery to shell Kurdish forces defending Erbil, the Pentagon said.

 ISIL artillery is being used to kill and conquer Iraqi territory ...
Oh, nevermind, it's our artillery, it just does that automatically.

The strikes marked a return to U.S. military engagement in Iraq, three years after Obama removed U.S. forces.

Obama, in a speech Thursday night from the White House, said that he was authorizing airstrikes to protect American interests in Iraq and drops of food and water for tens of thousands of refugees trapped by ISIS on a mountain in Iraq.

Rear Adm. John Kirby, a Pentagon spokesman, said Friday: “As the president made clear, the United States military will continue to take direct action against ISIL when they threaten our personnel and facilities.” ISIS and ISIL are acronyms to describe the same Islamic militant group.

Story here and here.

Just a thought - how did the ISIS manage to roll up the Iraqi army after years of US training?

Iraqi soldiers who fled ISIS advance accuse officers of treason
Iraqi soldiers deny abandoning their posts following ISIS advance

Erbil, Asharq Al-Awsat—Iraqi troops who fled the advance of Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) fighters into Mosul have denied that they abandoned their posts, saying that they had received orders to flee from up the chain of command.

Another thought - firing an accurate artillery barrage is not like firing a rifle. It takes training and logistics. Where did these savages learn to fire sophisticated modern artillery?  (This link is interesting)

[...]there's been an influx of skilled Saddam-era military leaders and soldiers into ISIS' ranks. "When you look at some of the reports about the leadership under [ISIS commander Abu Bakr] al-Baghdadi," Rosenblatt said, "those second-in-command guys have very strong ties to Saddam's army." Acquiring lots of weapons, money, and experience over the course of the Syrian war allowed them to translate that new training into real military effectiveness.

Just one more thought - What can slow the advance of ISIS forces? ISIS is now messing with the Kurds and the US may finally be rousing from its sleep.

[...]an unexpected military intervention by a third party. The semi-autonomous Kurdish area in northwest Iraq is adjacent to ISIS' stronghold. Their powerful military, which has already had small clashes with ISIS-aligned forces, could challenge ISIS. And who knows what effect a large-scale American air campaign against ISIS would have on the balance of power.

The Ukraine Is In An Unenviable Position

Su-25 Frogfoot
The UAF had 36 of these jets.

Designed for close air support, the Sukhoi Su-25 "Frogfoot" was first deployed by the Soviet  Union
in 1978. It is still used by the Russian, Belarusian, Ukrainian and North Korean Air Forces. During the 1991 Gulf War, the Iraqi Air Force deployed the Su-25 only once. Both jets were shot down.

At least three of these aircraft have been downed by pro-Russian separatists. 

The Ukraine military was armed by the Russians and trained by the Russians. It's tough fighting a war when your enemy knows your tactics, your equipment, your comms and has heavily penetrated your ranks. This is what Ukraine is facing in its struggle with Russian backed separatists.

It's like trying to fight with your right hand while your left hand is punching you in the face.

The Ukrainian government has been requesting military assistance from the US for months. Finally, aid was authorized but restricted to non-lethal equipment in order to appease Putin - and it was slow in coming (I suspect that Obama would only send a few bottles of Listerine, tubes of  KY jelly and condoms). Then last month (June) Obama upped the ante:

After initially denying Ukrainian military requests for key nonlethal aid, the White House on Wednesday approved urgently needed equipment for troops battling pro-Russian insurgents.

The new military assistance includes body armor, night vision goggles, and communications equipment requested by the Ukrainians, but initially rejected by the Obama administration as part of its efforts to avoid upsetting Moscow.

“The United States is working to bolster Ukraine’s ability to secure its borders and preserve its territorial integrity and sovereignty in the face of Russian occupation of Crimea and a concerted effort by Russian-backed separatists to destabilize eastern Ukraine,” the White House said in a statement announcing the aid.

Now after the downing of Flight MH17, more missile action from the Russkies as reported by USA Today:

Russian-backed separatists shot down two Ukrainian fighter jets Wednesday in the eastern regions of the country, according to the Ukrainian Defense Ministry.

The ministry said on its Facebook page that the jets were among four Russian-built fighters that were returning to base after providing air support for Ukrainian troops near the border.

The pilots of both jets ejected from the aircraft, the ministry said. Their condition was not immediately reported.

Defense Ministry spokesman Oleksiy Dmitrashkovsky said the Sukhoi-25 fighters were downed in an area called Savur Mogila in the Shaktersky region near the Russian border.

Su-24 Fencer 
The UAF had 36 of these aircraft. One has been been reported lost to the conflict.

Wow. If the Su-24 isn't a twin of the USAF F-111 Aardvark. Judge for yourself.
Both aircraft have variable-sweep wings. The F-111 entered service in 1967, the Su-24 in 1971.

F-111

The site is only a few miles from where a Malaysia Airlines jetliner crashed last week after apparently being shot down by a surface-to-air missile with 298 people aboard.

The latest shootdowns are the first reported downing of a plane over eastern Ukraine since the Malaysia Airlines incident.

Now Ukraine is requesting radar jamming equipment from the US.

According to a former senior U.S. defense official who has worked closely with Ukraine’s military and a former head of state who has consulted with the government there, Kiev last month requested the radar jamming and detection equipment necessary to evade and counter the anti-aircraft systems Moscow was providing the country’s separatists.

Those anti-aircraft systems were almost certainly used to shoot down MH17, the Malaysian air passenger jet shot out of the sky last Thursday. U.S. officials have pointed the finger at Russia for providing that equipment, though no final assessment has been made of culpability for the incident.

Philip Karber, a former strategy adviser to Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, has conducted detailed assessments of the country’s military since the crisis began this year. Karber returned from the Ukrainian front earlier this month. He told The Daily Beast, “I was told in June by the Ukrainians that one of their top five priorities that they had conveyed to the United States and NATO that month was to get help in electronic warfare,” which gives a military the ability to detect, spoof and jam the radars of enemy anti-aircraft missile batteries.

The Ukraine Air Force inherited hundreds of Russian aircraft when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. Many, mostly strategic bombers, were sold back to Russia. Unable to provide the funding to maintain these planes, many are now useless and were mothballed or scrapped.

Ukraine military resources as listed by the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) Defense Analysis blog, dated March 2014:

SU-27 Flanker

Mig-29 Fulcrum