Hanging out with JWT, I’ve come across vets who’ve trained Iraqi and Afghan troops in the fine art of firefights. When I ask if our Arab allies are ready to take back Mosul and otherwise kick ISIS ass, well, let’s just say the vets are not entirely optimistic. Still, someone’s got to it, no? [h/t CC]

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  2. Y’all realize it is US taxpayers paying these clowns, right? They did not show the training in the safe dropping of those guns when confronted with an enemy.

  3. OK, ignoring the sweeping of everyone with muzzles and stuff, what does that silly trick shooting have to do with warfare? Is this what they think makes them warriors?

  9. Wow, if they’re relying on those guys to take back Mosul, we’ll kick a$$ if suddenly confronted by a collection of stationary balloons.

  10. While it may not be immediately obvious, great equipment, tactics, organization, and superior numbers are much less important than the concrete resolve to fight and win.

    It would appear that many (if not most) people in the entire world lack the concrete resolve to fight and win. And that includes the Middle East.

    • This is it. People need a reason to fight.

      In WW2, us, the Brits and Commonwealth, Finns, and the French had to fight to protect our freedom and our own people. The Germans and Russians feared their own more than the enemy, and the Japanese were brainwashed.

      I can’t imagine that us bombing the homes of Iraqis/Afghanis and then telling them to shoot their cultural and religious brethren is good enough motivation, plus they probably want to be left alone by the west, rather than have progressive/liberall/socialist democracy forced upon them.

      • they probably want to be left alone by the west

        Basically the biggest reason we have problems in SWA as it is. Long history of colonialism and interferance by western nations, plus dashes of propaganda by those seeking power and wanting a boogeyman to blame, are why we just need to stop dicking around there and let them take care of their own crap, if they want it so bad.

        • Of course, the whole reason we haven’t been fighting against Jihad since 1914 is because we (the winners of WWI) divided up the Islamic nations in order to keep them from organizing and “jihading” all over the world again. Since then, Western nations have been messing around in their business (until recent years) in order to maintain disunity in the region… and thus, relative peace within the rest of the world.

          Its difficult for bees to swarm when they can’t be together.

          That sort of sums up the policy in the middle east until Obama. His “hands off” mentality has created space for the Muslims of the world to unite under the banner of a single caliphate. Of course, they are still trying to decide whose caliphate will rule them all. Isis is claiming they are it. Iran does not like this because they want to be the ones with the only caliphate. The debate rages on… This may be our only saving grace at this point, though, because Iran might be crazy enough to nuke Isis. That would be bad, too, but… Better A? Better B? Thank your current presidential administration for this mess.

          So, you see, if the western countries (like the USA) kept our hands out of their business for the past 100 years, we might not even have westernized countries any more. Messing around in their stuff was kind of important.

          Study up on the Sykes-Picot Agreement to understand this more. It basically was the **foundation** for international policy in the Middle East until President Obama.

        • No, the key problem is that there is nothing there. No one wants to live there. They’ve been conquered innumerable times but there is no reason for their conqueror to stay. So they eventually leave out of boredom or for financial reasons. They are most decidedly NOT good fighters. Or good at anything. They are little more than rats with vocabulary. If we want to end the trouble from Afghanistan we should just move everyone out of there. No one would move back. Or if Americans move in, suddenly industries would be created there because our culture would find a way to make money in any desert.

          Iraq is entirely different. Its people are educated and they have a tradition of the rule of law that has been stunted by Saddam hussein and now by religious fanatics in their midst. I have hope for Iraq.

      • Most Afghans have no use for the Taliban. However, they are smart enough not to fight when they can’t trust the US to keep the faith. The war was won in a few weeks by the Northern Alliance supported by a handful of US special forces and air power. Unfortunately for everyone, Bush abandoned them to attack Saddam on the basis of weak intelligence. That gave the Taliban breathing room to move back in.

        After the US defeated the Iraqi army, the Sunnis were pissed because they were no longer top dog, the Shiites couldn’t decide whether they wanted to build a decent country or be religious fanatics, and the Kurds were too busy building a home for themselves to care about anyone’s religion. The Sunni awakening was a reaction to Sunni insurgents abusing everyone including other Sunnis. The Shiites eventually decided to replace the Sunnis.as top dogs. The only sensible suggestion Joe Biden ever made was to partition Iraq among the three groups.

        The Sunnis initially welcomed ISIS because they weren’t westerners or Shiites. However, they are now learning that ISIS is even worse than the insurgents who turned on them before. The only positive result of ISIS atrocities is that they are making enemies of everyone including neutrals and those who would otherwise welcome them. It’s becoming ISIS versus the world and ISIS isn’t strong enough to win that fight.

        • Well, said. Gen. Petraeus quickly figured out that the Sunnis’ tribal loyalties were stronger than their religious loyalties. Then he figured out that they could be easily bought and turned against Al-Qaeda which was largely made up of non-tribal foreigners. The “Sunni Awakening” was basically hired tribal soldiers killing off Al-Qaeda. In Afghanistan tribal loyalties are even more important than in Iraq. The Afgan pastoral nomadic mountain tribes have centuries long mercenary soldier traditions. They’re all for sale. Right now the Taliban and Al-Qaeda are just the top bidders. The US government’s naive ideas of “nation building” in both countries were were entirely wrong and got a lot of people needlessly killed.

        • Wrong. We started “losing” Afghanistan as soon as we went away from killing the Taliban and Al Qaeda affiliates with a light foot print and started this silly notion of trying to introduce the idea of nation wide “Democracy” to a country which essentially lacks a civil society and then bring in big army to reinforcing that notion. Whether or not you disagree with the Iraq invasion is almost irrelevant, because a large footprint on the ground in Afghanistan should not have been the case anyways.

    • The Iraq war was a tragic mistake. Fortunately it cost us less blood than that other tragic mistake, Viet Nam. But a tragedy, still.

  12. No arab military has defeated any non-arab military for quite some time. Like roughly five hundred years. For all their violence, and willingness to die, they have no cultural tradition of stoicism under fire or personal bravery. And they’re terrible shots. The safest you will ever be in combat is in the line of fire of a haji. If they can’t see you, you might get unlucky. Best to just walk up on em.

    • Some Iraqis can shoot because not all Coalition casualties are the result of IEDs and suicide bombers.

      Nobody realizes that, compared to World War Two, the Afghan and Iraqi wars have been fought on a shoestring. There are complaints about casualties and the cost. When you adjust for the difference in US population and the size of the economy, the modern equivalent to WW2 would be 40 million Americans in uniform, 2.6 million casualties and an expenditure of $30 trillion. The economy was on a war footing. For example, you couldn’t buy a new car because all the factories were turning out military vehicles.

      • And most people also don’t realize that the GWOT cost about as much as most of the rest of our wars combined. Obviously, some economic comparisons are somewhat difficult. And the Civil War is the big killer.
        Otherwise, GWOT cost a LOT.

      • World War 2 was one of the few “good” wars we ever fought. Everything since 1950-not so much. One dead American for I-rack was too many…

    • As the Jews proved in their various wars, third world militaries, even when they have a substantial numerical advantage and attack on several fronts, cannot stand against a small, poorly equipped first world military. In the ’73 war, once Ariel Sharon got his tanks across the Suez Canal, trapping the entire Egyptian Army in the desert, it was all over.

      • The Egyptian Army crushed the Bar lev line and assualted, quite successfully across the Suez. Syria had the biggest part of the Golan under their treads and could see most of Isreal spread before them. It was such a close run thing that we were on standby and kitted up to go in and help the Isrealis.

        Do not assume that Arabs can’t fight. They can. Their biggest weakness for generations now has been a lack of real leaders.

        Say what you will about Nixon. But he saw a genocide developing and took quick, deciseive steps to intervene.

        • The Egyptian commanders failed to protect their flanks. This allowed Sharon to put a relatively small force of tanks across the canal where they found the Egyptian rear completely undefended. They then proceeded to roll up the Egyptian rear areas, cutting off the Egyptian army from it’s supplies. At one point the Israelis were delivering water to the Egyptians. . . Basically, the Egyptians left their backdoor open and, seeing his opportunity, Sharon kicked it open and won the battle. Would first world field commanders, and especially Israeli field commanders, have made that kind of bush-league mistake? I doubt it.

        • Lack of real leaders. The soldiers are as tough and brave as any others. They’re just very poorly served by their bosses.

        • As in many places, their military commanders are selected by their proximity to the royals, the elite, the rulers, etc, particularly those too stupid to fill a real job. Capability is unimportant, Allah will see us through.

    • As anyone can witness just from correspondent videos, Arabs are so brick-stupid that their idea of combat is holding the gun sideways around a corner or over the top of a hill and running out the mag without looking, counting on Allah to aim for them. Eventually they claim to their supporters that they need more guns, theirs are worn out, because they never hit anything but unarmed civilians. Otherwise, you take your enemy’s guns and ammo.

  13. I know these must be elite Iraqi Operators who are Operating Operationally with their firearms but I find it somewhat suspicious that I saw no recoil or ejected casings in any of those shots. I’m a fairly large man and I can’t daintily hold a handgun over my head and fire it without some kind of evident recoil.

  14. The Kurds are great people and good fighters. The rest of the Iraqis are useless. I’d rather have them fighting against me than behind me fighting with me. As far as deaths from gunshots, my unit lost more soldiers to Iraqi Army soldiers than to the insurgents.

  15. No, someone doesn’t got to do it.

    Take all the money we’re pouring in there, build a bunch of new nuke plants, really fund biofuel and battery development, and first and formost stop buying their bloody oil!

    Then let them kill themselves as hard as they want, go to heaven or hell or oblivion in whatever fashion they want, and leave the rest of the world the heck out of it.

    Leave a phone number and gmail address so they can get ahold of the rest of the world when they’re ready to join civilization, or at least the latter half of the 20th century.

    • You seem to believe that they will leave us alone and that they would wish to progress. Where did you get that idea? They have now established a caliphate. This one may succeed or fail but they are dead set on bringing Islam to all the world, especially to the US which they regard as decadent and evil. The only progression they will have will be in arms development. With your plan they will eventually reach mikitary parity with us.

  18. The one group that is worth supporting is the Kurds and they don’t need training, just weapons and air support.

  20. Weapons of mass b.s., mission accomplished. Nice job george and Dickie, thanks for everything. What a de-stabilized regional mess they now have. I feel bad for the common person there trying to live their lives. Cavemen rules apply.

    • caveman rule always apply. sometimes its less hassle to observe another set of rule fist tho.

  22. What I want to see is them ringing steel. Near misses will still pop the balloons, depending on the construction of the wall. They could possibly be hitting four or five feet away and still be getting pops.

  23. I wonder if ISIS/AQ is similarly frustrated in their training efforts. We’re always blowing up those camps, it must be for some reason (I hope)

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