The fall of post invasion Iraq

[Minimalist]

Apparently Maliki's "offensive" to recapture the Sunni areas is not going so well........

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/08/world/...TE&ei=5043

ERBIL, Iraq — Sunni militants captured the Mosul dam, the largest in Iraq, on Thursday as their advances in the country’s north created an onslaught of refugees and set off fearful rumors in Erbil, the Kurdish regional capital.

Residents near the dam and officials in the region confirmed that the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, held the dam, a potentially catastrophic development for Iraq’s civilian population.

The dam, which sits on the Tigris River and is about 30 miles northwest of the city of Mosul, provides electricity to Mosul and controls the water supply for a large amount of territory. A report published in 2007 by the United States government, which had been involved with work on the dam, warned that should it fail, a 65-foot wave of water could be unleashed across areas of northern Iraq.

It's almost taken as a given that the Afghani National Army is going to fail miserably against them and without ISAF support.

Yup. And for the same reason that the Iraqi army failed and the S. Vietnamese army failed. Armies don't just need weapons and training. They need commitment, discipline and morale. They have to believe in what they are fighting for. If you take a bunch of guys who need a job in a poverty stricken area they are little more than mercenaries.

And what Machiavelli said about mercenaries remains true.

Mercenaries and auxiliaries are useless and dangerous; and if one holds his state based on these arms, he will stand neither firm nor
safe; for they are disunited, ambitious, and without discipline,
unfaithful, valiant before friends, cowardly before enemies; they have
neither the fear of God nor fidelity to men, and destruction is
deferred only so long as the attack is; for in peace one is robbed by
them, and in war by the enemy. The fact is, they have no other
attraction or reason for keeping the field than a trifle of stipend,
which is not sufficient to make them willing to die for you. They are
ready enough to be your soldiers whilst you do not make war, but if
war comes they take themselves off or run from the foe; which I should
have little trouble to prove, for the ruin of Italy has been caused by
nothing else than by resting all her hopes for many years on
mercenaries, and although they formerly made some display and appeared valiant amongst themselves, yet when the foreigners came they showed what they were.