Rational Grounds

The differences clash across a landscape that has grown increasingly violent since Iraq's Jan. 30 parliamentary elections, when U.S. commanders made the training of the Iraqi forces their top priority. [...]

The Americans initially sent a small group of soldiers to work with the Iraqis. That changed after the Jan. 30 elections. Cato said the unit received a flurry of orders from commanders to make the training of Iraqi security forces "our main effort."

(emphasis mine)

It's generally accepted that U.S. military involvement in Iraq can only really start to draw down when the Iraqi military and police forces are off the ground and able to provide both internal and external security. Naturally, getting to that point should be a major, if not the major, goal of the American presence in Iraq right now.

So why are we also hearing this:

The Americans drove fully enclosed armored Humvees, the Iraqis open-backed Humvees with benches, the sides of which were protected by plating the equivalent of a flak jacket. ... As an American reporter climbed in with the Iraqis, the U.S. soldiers watched in bemused horror.

"You might be riding home alone," one soldier said to the other reporter.

[...]

Zwayid, a father of three, looked in disgust at his own AK-47 assault rifle, with a green shoelace for a strap.

"We fire 10 bullets and it falls apart," he said. Zwayid patted a heavy machine gun mounted in the bed of the Humvee. "This jams," he said. "Are these the weapons worthy of a soldier?" He and others said it was a sign of the Americans' lack of confidence in them.

[...]

Due to a mixup in paperwork, dozens of Iraqi soldiers went without pay for three months. Many lacked proper uniforms, body armor and weapons. To meet the shortfall, U.S. forces gave the Iraqis rifles and ammunition confiscated during raids in Baiji.

[...]

The men are housed at what they call simply "the base," a place as sparse as the name. Most of the Iraqis sleep in two tents and a shed with a concrete floor and corrugated tin roof that is bereft of walls. Some have cots; others sleep on cardboard or pieces of plywood stacked with tattered and torn blankets. The air conditioners are broken. There is no electricity.

Drinking water comes from a sun-soaked camouflage tanker whose meager faucet also provides water for bathing.

[...]

At 4:30 a.m. Monday, the men of Charlie Company and the entire U.S. battalion -- some 800 soldiers -- set out in a convoy for west Baiji. The Americans used night-vision goggles to see in the dark. The Iraqis had glow sticks.

Emphasis, again, mine. Glowsticks? Are you goddamn serious?

Let me get this straight. We don't give these people the equipment they need to defend themselves, to attack the enemy, to see during night raids, to sleep, eat, or bathe properly, and we expect them to turn into reliable soldiers? It's a measure of how desperate the rest of the population is that we have any Iraqis willing to work with us.

The "success" of our mission in Iraq, defined now as leaving with slightly more decorum than a pellmell dash for a rooftop chopper, hinges on establishing a stable government structure. The starting point for such a project, especially in an country wracked by a sophisticated and well-funded insurgency, is establishing a governmental monopoly on force. This necessarily requires the government to have forces in which to invest said monopoly powers.

As the Washington Post article illustrates, there are already several nearly insurmountable cultural and political obstacles to this task, and we have little or no control over most of them. But not putting up the necessary funding and effort to get these Iraqi troops proper equipment and facilities is in our control and makes the whole operation a non-starter, period. If we're not spending our money on this, what the hell are we spending it on?

We are obviously not serious about this task, and thus we are not serious about this whole endeavor. And while we fritter around waiting blaming Syria and Iran and Baathists and whoever else, people are dying in the hot dark.