Secretary Carter, Apologize to Iraq's soldiers and to America for Misrepresenting Its Character

Dear readers, if you haven't yet read it, I hope you will spool down and read General MacArthur's "Duty Honor Country" speech. It is the ultimate expression of what it means to be an American soldier. ~~~~~ Today, I want to honor soldiers in another way, by addressing comments made by US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter on Sunday. Carter told a TV reporter that Iraqi forces had demonstrated “no will to fight” against ISIS, blaming them for a retreat that led to the ISIS victory in Ramadi. Secretary Carter’s remarks on CNN’s State of the Union were the Obama administration’s strongest statement yet about what it sees as Iraq’s repeated inability to hold and take back territory from ISIS. Carter went on : “They were not outnumbered. In fact, they vastly outnumbered the opposing force and yet they failed to fight and withdrew from the site. That says to me and, I think, to most of us, that we have an issue with the will of the Iraqis to fight ISIL and defend themselves.” Carter also supported President Obama’s opposition to imbedding US ground troops alongside Iraqis on the front lines to give more accurate guidance for bombing. Carter, despite many expert military and congressional evaluations to the contrary, said that American and allied airstrikes have been “effective....If there comes a time when we have to change the kinds of support we give, we will make that recommendation....But what happened in Ramadi was a failure of the Iraqi forces to fight, and so our efforts now are devoted to providing their ground forces with the equipment, the training, and encouraging their will to fight so that our campaign enabling them can be successful -- both in defeating ISIL and keeping ISIL defeated in a sustained way.” ~~~~~ Last night on CNN, an Iraqi regular Army soldier talked to Arwa Damon, a reporter born in America, whose father is an American professor and mother a Syrian raised in Damascus. Damon grew up in Morocco and Turkey and speaks English, Arabic, Turkish and French as maternal languages. So there were no errors in translating. While CNN played the mobile phone video that the soldier's unit had made of their actual final hours in Ramadi, the soldier told Damon that they tried to fight off one ISIS attack and were then told that another ISIS unit was coming to squeeze them from another angle. They turned back at least two suicide tank bomb attacks. They called for air support that never came, and they then ran out of ammunition. It was at that point that they were ordered to evacuate. ~~~~~ This is the Ramadi story of one Iraqi regular Army unit -- not running from the fight but ordered out when they had no more ammunition. If there was an Iraqi lack of will to fight, it came from field headquarters errors. Most failures in battle come not from the soldiers on the line but from their support and strategic support and leadership. There is a good reason that Washington and Pershing and Stillwell and Patton and Clark stayed close to their troops -- it was to guide and protect and supply them as best possible. And this is certainly one of the reasons that some members of Congress, including Senator John McCain, have called on President Obama to authorize American troops to accompany Iraqi forces on the battlefield to call in specific locations for bombing, to provide accurate timely intelligence and to offer by example the leadership qualities now lacking in the Iraqi general staff -- which was stripped of its professional leadership, replaced by al-Maliki with his non-professional shiite cronies. Current Iraqi prime minister al-Abadi, at the head of a shiite govennment, has not reversed those failures. His regular Army is weak because instead of rebuilding its general staff, he has partially cast aside the Army in favor of relying on Iran's fellow-shiite Qums Revolutionary Guard strategists and on the deployment of Iran-led militia field units. Iraq deputy prime minister Saleh al-Mutlaq said yesterday that without reconciliation between sunni and shiites, which is not being advanced by al-Abadi, nothing will improve. And al-Mutlaq said the reconciliation must include arming sunni militias and having an American military leadership presence. ~~~~~ "The Obama administration is focused on continuing to bolster the Iraqi forces, who will ultimately win or lose the fight," Carter said. Of course, this is pure nonsense, spoken to defend the do-nothing policy of President Obama. Senator McCain, who is chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, on Sunday repeated his call to send American ground troops, including Special Operations forces, into Iraq. “We need to have a strategy,” he said on CBS’s Face the Nation. “There is no strategy. And anybody that says that there is. I’d like to hear what it is. Because it certainly isn’t apparent now.” Concurring was Representative Mac Thornberry, who heads the House Armed Services Committee. He spoke on ABC's This Week and emphasized the need for more and better intelligence : “The other thing we’ve got to do is improve our intelligence capability,...the key way to know what they’re doing, to prevent them from getting a nuclear, chemical, biological weapon, is to augment our intelligence capability and then you’ve got to act.” ~~~~~ Vice President Biden on Monday telephoned Prime Minister al-Abadi to offer America's and President Obama's thanks for “the enormous sacrifice and bravery of Iraqi forces” and promised US support and supplies, all in the hope of calming the waters after Defense Secretary Carter's remarkably insensitive and destructive statements. But, today, without any visibly enhanced US support, Iraqi government forces formally launched an operation to drive ISIS out of Anbar province. The announcement was made by a spokesman for the Popular Mobilisation (al-Hashd al-Shaabi), a volunteer force comprising dozens of Iran-led shiite militias. The operation is intended to move southward from Salahuddin province to cut off ISIS militants in Ramadi from the Baiji oil refinery, and to form a semi-circle around Ramadi to retake the city and to cut off an ISIS advance toward Baghdad. ~~~~~ This may indicate to those cynical, or ignorant of the facts, that Iraq can manage militarily without US ground troops. The truth is that without US help, the Iraqi shiite government has moved even closer to shiite Iran, making a coalition with the sunni majority in Iraq very problematic. CNN analyst Philip Mudd says the government's willingness to make use of shiite militia groups supported by Iran alongside the Iraqi army to retake Ramadi in the sunni heartland of Anbar province may create future problems. Mudd, a former CIA counterterrorism official, said : "Short term, they may win. [However] The long-term solution for Iraq may not be a unified state if the only message they (sunnis in Anbar province) get is either join ISIS, which will behead you, or support the government, which brings in rival shiite militias to oust the sunnis. It's a very difficult political situation." But, a US military leadership presence would not only drive Iran-led militia to the sidelines, it would also provide the neutral Iraqi military needed to support a unified sunni-shiite Iraq government. ~~~~~ So, Secretary Carter, my suggestion would be that you first apologize to all Iraqi soldiers. Then, turn the US military general staff loose to do what they know needs to be done -- more supplies, on-the-ground military tactical and strategic leadership, heightened use of intelligence, and a new air strike component that sufficiently bombs ISIS to both stop their advances and destroy them in place. As it is today, Secretary Carter, you are just burning US military budget dollars on inadequate bombing sorties that do nothing to stop ISIS. Blaming others for one's own failures is the mark of weak character. It is also contrary to the American character. The real question, Secretary Carter, is not whether Iraqi soldiers have the will to fight ISIS. The real question is whether you and President Obama have the will to fight ISIS and free Iraq of its increasing dependence on Iran.