Ramadi

[Anomalocaris]

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


Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince  

It was true in 1513 and it is still true today.

The "army" of the Iraq that we created does not qualify even as an mercenary army.   A true mercenary army, however treacherous, usually has some non-zero record of esprit de corp and fighting skill, such that it could at least be attempted to be believed that when correctly incentivized (for example by having absolute air supremacy and out numbering its foes 40 to 1), it would put up some pretense of fighting that would not be too ambarassing to watch.

What we have under the banner of "Iraqi national army" is an opportunistic second rate gang, not even a mercenary army.

Iraq has the raw material to make a real mercenary army.   It is the trained Sunni officers and men of saddam's old iraqi national army.    But in the glorious wisdom unique to neoconservatism, spiked with gloating vindictive non-inclusivity of American right wing in general, we cashiered those men, sent them packing back to their sunni homes and installed a Shia regime, just as corrupt as saddam and far less capable of keeping the lights on and the street so safe, over them to rob them blind.    So those men, who could actually have given the new Iraqi state a mercenary army worthy of the name "army", are now with the Sunni Islamic State.

So guess what, if only the new Iraqi state had a mercenary army that is actually an army, it wouldn't be in its current state.   But such mercenary army as could be had in post saddam Iraq is, guess what, training and fighting for the Sunni IS, against the shia Iraqi state we, the U.S., had set up, thanks entirely to US of A and the same bunch who screamed for a witch hunt against Clinton over Benghazi.