Iraqi Armed Forces = South Vietnamese Armed Forces post 1973

[DemocratSinceBirth]

What a mess...

Carry on...

[malaise]

1. And the end will be the same n/t

[DemocratSinceBirth]

3. The same people who got us into this mess are the same people who want us to stay

The same people who got us into this mess are the same people who want us to stay and they have the chutzpah to say Iraq is a mess because we left...


I saw some clown, Ron Christie, a Cheney lackey, analogize Iraq to South Korea and argue we have had troops there for sixty years.
He omits the fact the South Koreans are okay with our presence, aren't shooting at us, and we are there to deter North Korea, not keep the South Koreans in check.

[DetlefK]

4. Sunk Costs Fallacy.

Don't think about the money/time/whatever you have already invested.
It's gone. You won't get it back, no matter what you do.
Think about the future: How much more money/time/whatever will it cost if you make this or that decision.


"If we leave now, they will have died in vain! All the money we invested will have been for nothing! All the effort I invested into saving our marriage would have been for nought!"

* Dead is dead. Whether their deaths made sense or not, it doesn't matter. Whatever the course of action, they stay dead. The only thing that counts is future deaths. How many more people are you willing to let die for your cause?

* Same with the money: You invested money and you didn't get a return for it. Last chance: Can you build me the fighter-plane for the cost you told me last time? No? Then fuck you, no product, no money.

* Same with relationships. How will things be 1 week from now? 1 month from now? 1 year from now? Will things be better? No? Break up. NOW!!!

[DemocratSinceBirth]

5. Like spending seventy five dollars to fix a forty dollar watch.

It really is a mess...

Marco Rubio said the world is a better place without Saddam Hussein. That is ridiculous.

[bemildred]

2. Yep. They never learn. nt

[JEB]

7. A big fucking bloody mess, but

Cheney and his MIC buddies made a killing (morbid pun intended).

[roamer65]

8. It's different and worse.

Saigon fell, Vietnam for better or worse, was unified and it was over.

Iraq is now another front in the proxy and now near full scale war between Iran and Saudi Arabia. ISIS may take the Sunni areas of Iraq, but they will not take the Shia south. Iran will outright invade that region and occupy it to stop it from occurring. I definitely would turn a "blind eye" to it as the Iranians are no where near as evil as ISIS.

A more valid comparison is that ISIS is a lot like Cambodia's Khmer Rouge and the Iranians could well be like the Vietnamese of 1979 in having to go in and eliminate them.

[KingCharlemagne]

9. I get where you're coming from (I think), but I think this is something of

a false analogy\false equivalence.

To wit, the puppet forces of South Vietnam enjoyed little or no popular support from the people of the South. By contrast, the Iraqi Armed Forces are largely Shiite and, while they may encounter substantial resistance in majority Sunni and Kurdish areas, they will enjoy substantial legitimacy in the southern area of Iraq (where the population is majority Shiite).

By the same token, the puppet forces of South Vietnam had no regional power backing them. (China and the USSR both supported the North, albeit for different ideological reasons). By contrast, the Iraqi military enjoys the tacit if not overt support of a regional hegemon, Iran, whereas the Sunni resistance is supported tacitly by Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

11. My comments were more about their capabilities as a military force.

They appear to be absolutely feckless...

[KingCharlemagne]

13. Yeah, I got you. Interesting parallels even if they have their limits, eh? - nt

[DemocratSinceBirth]

14. If I heard the t v correctly they lost thirty military vehicles they were just given yesterday./NT

[bemildred]

12. Why the Iraqi army keeps failing

---

The Shiite brigades, known as the "hashd shaabi" or "popular mobilization" units, are to a varying extent backed by Iran and are, in some cases, better equipped than the Iraqi army. They were essential players in the Iraqi government's recapture of the city of Tikrit, north of Baghdad, earlier this year, a grinding offensive that saw U.S. warplanes operate alongside Iranian proxy units on the ground.

A similar fate now appears to be in store for Ramadi, as Shiite fighters seek to push back the Islamic State, which gleefully dubs its opponents among the militias and Iraqi security forces as "apostates." There are fears over rights abuses and sectarian atrocities carried out in largely Sunni areas after the Shiite militias "liberate" them from the Islamic State.

---

This underlying divide plays into the Islamic State's hands, and underscores the difficulty Abadi's government has in putting forward a credible, cohesive Iraqi army when there just simply isn't one.

"The deficiencies of the army cannot be corrected because they reflect the realities of the society," writes American diplomat Peter Galbraith, in a blunt assessment.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2015/05/19/why-the-iraqi-army-keeps-failing/

Just because the Pentagon says it built an army, that doesn't mean it will fight.

[Baclava]

10. Not quite

In Vietnam, the Viet Cong guerrillas in the south were backed by a large conventional North Vietnamese Army with thousands of tanks and artillery with resupply from the North. In Iraq you have hit-and-run attacks from small guerrilla forces driving Toyotas.

In South Vietnam the NVA rolled in a massive conventional military attack that overwhelmed the forces in the south.

In Iraq you have a bunch of policemen running scared from a handful of fanatic beheaders.