The city of Mosul in Iraq was defended by more than 35,000 army troops and para-military police. They had over 100 tanks or armored cars dozens if not hundreds of artillery pieces and air craft ranging from Apache attack choppers to F-16’s.
800 fighters from an Al Qaeda group show up last week in some pick-up trucks and the Iraqis run away.
Let us repeat a force of 800 lightly armed fighters defeated a force of over 35,000.
If just one tank platoon had held their ground the rebels would have been wet spots in the sand.
The question of ‘Who lost Iraq?’ Is therefore very simple, the Iraqis did.
They didn’t lose it they threw it away along with their honor.
There is simply no helping a country that fields an army such as that.
Game over.
The other question ‘What should the US do now?’ Is also easy to answer- Nothing.
No boots on the ground, no air strikes no nothing.
Let the Iranians who are only slightly more civilized that the monsters marching on Baghdad spend their blood and treasure and only their blood and treasure on stopping them.
If Syria is any standard to judge the war between Sunnis nut job and Shiite nut job in Iraq will last years if not decades. Whoever emerges as the ‘winner’ will lose to a puppy in a fair fight.
Ten years ago we would not be so laissez faire but that was before North American oil hit a bumper crop.
Iraq, Iran heck the whole screwed up Islamic world really doesn’t command the world’s economy as it once did.
If Iraq falls the price of a barrel of crude will go up, but not by much and certainly not enough to merit the loss of even one drone let alone an American service man or contractor.
The sad part if one is a member of that sick cult known as Islam is that it didn’t have to be this way.
Since oil was discovered in the sands of Arabia in the first part of the 20th century the Middle East has imbibed trillions of dollars and wasted the vast bulk of it.
Instead of building schools they bought bombs and bomb delivery systems. Instead of making the desert bloom they turned it red.
With less than a thousandth of the yearly profits from oil they could have bought a space program and planted the green flag of Islam on the moon.
Instead over a quarter of the adult men and over 50 percent of the women of the half a billion Muslim Arabs are illiterate and they are likely to stay that way.
It is a sorry epitaph for a part of the world that was the cradle of civilization but how does the old saying go? You can’t fix stupid.
Of course not all Arabs are psychotic murderers some of them are quite nice.
But put it this way just how successful would a gang of even heavily armed rapists murderers would be in America even in a civil war?
The first time they crucified someone would probably be their last.
Americans of all stripes and persuasion would not tolerate it.
And the reason for that is simple, our culture is better.
Yes we have our nut jobs, we just don’t make them leaders.
And now we don’t need Islamic oil.
So let’s leave them to their misery.