At what point can we say the Iraqi army is fully trained?

[TastesLikeChicken]

Originally posted by: Harvey

Originally posted by: TastesLikeChicken
The US fought and won WW2 and then spent 7 more years occupying Japan and Germany. Then we kept their military forces severely limited for decades beyond that. So there's no comparison whatsoever.

Do you even bother to read history, techs? Or do you ignore it so you can create these troll threads?

We didn't volunteer for WW II. It came to us, and there were real enemies who really attacked us... unlike your Traitor In Chief's war of LIES.

Do you even bother to read history, TLC? Or do you ignore it so you can BE the major troll in these threads?

So volunteering or not for a war makes a difference how effectively we train the military of the countries we occupy after we defeat them, Harvey?

Please do tell how that red herring of yours has any effect?

Or were you talking about the volunteer military we have now vs. the draft we had in WW2?

btw, we didn't train much of a military for either Germany or Japan after WW2 and I doubt that to this very day they could effectively protect their respective nations, which is why we still have tens of thousands of troops in both places. But no doubt you'll ignore those facts so you can go on one of your ridiculously toolish "Traitor in Chief" rants.

 

[palehorse]

Originally posted by: Lemon law
But its totally lame on this thread, because its signed " Thank You, the US Military."

Pardon me, I thought this thread was about the Iraqi military and when they would be ready.

And instead, we have palehorse74 begging for more time for the US military to finally get ready to do the job they have been bungling at for five plus years in Iraq and six plus years
in Afghanistan. So finally we get some honesty from palehorse74, and we can now ask when the US Military will finally be ready to fight in some more intelligent manner.

US military members are the ones conducting the training and evaluating ING's progress you dolt.

And, btw, the answer has already been provided in this thread more than once: The average GI Achmed is ready for whatever is asked of him -- it's his military leadership that needs more time to understand, plan, and eventually implement various tactics and strats.

There are several phases involved in most military training, and these are most often referred to as the Crawl, Walk, and Run phases. At this stage in the game, Iraqi National Guard leaders have been attached at the hip to their US equivalent for several years -- in combat, staff, and administrative positions. During that time, they have mostly completed the crawl and walk phases of their training.

Recently, many Iraqi units have had their reigns removed, and the run phase has begun to spread through the ING like wildfire, with many ING units taking over entire sections of the country and working independently.

Raising an Army of professional bullet-stoppers is the easy part; but, building said Army into an effective modern fighting force takes years, and requires leadership with experience!

Do you think it's any different for the average OBC or AIT graduate in the US Army? Can you imagine what an entire Army of fresh graduates would be like!? They'd get annihilated on the streets of Iraq!

We can't, and won't, let that happen to the ING.

 

[RightIsWrong]

Originally posted by: Queasy

Oh, and about Patreus' fabulous plan that is now working....You guys do realize that it was Patreus that was in charge of training of the Iraqi army in the first place before his promotion, right?

Did he feel that the training regimen was inadequate while he was supposed to be implementing it and didn't have the stones to stand up to the Bush admin and tell them? If he hasn't made any wholesale changes in the plan and felt that it was a viable solution to the training needs, was he just incompetent and unable to implement it himself?

Petraeus was not in charge of training the Iraqi forces originally. That was another General. Petraeus practically had to scrap everything and start all over.

Link

The Coalition Military Assistance Training Team (headed by Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton) was the organization set up by the United States military with the responsibility of training and development of the new army. In June 2004, it was dissolved and forced to pass on that responsibility to the MNSTC-I (initially headed by Lt. Gen. David Petraeus) due to its focus on developing the military for traditional defense from a hypothetical invasion by its neighbors rather than providing security for the Iraqi people from the emerging threat posed by the Iraqi insurgency [18].

Petraeus is the one that wrote the current book on counter-insurgency operations btw.

So you are saying that from 2004 until 2007 when he took over command, he wasn't in charge of training? Maybe you should alert him to that fact?

PBS Frontline interview of the General

Your assignment, to go in there in mid-2004 and set up a new training operation, comes out of what? What's the impetus for that?

... There were a number of different programs that were under way to help stand up the Iraqi police, to help establish the Ministry of Interior that would oversee those police and a variety of other organizations, border forces and so forth. It was the same on the military side, to start standing up the national Iraqi army. ...

The idea was to combine the effort overall -- particularly for the Iraqi army and the police -- to get our arms around all of that and to make this a very comprehensive approach to help the Iraqis to, first of all, organize, literally to design what force structure would be required, given this new situation they were facing; then, to help them train it, help them equip it, advise it ... and to help them rebuild the infrastructure that was necessary to support all of that. That's a massive task, [and] what we needed was an organization that could oversee both the military and the police. You actually got a certain synergy out of that because some of the equipment was the same. Certainly the construction efforts were similar, and so forth.

Is it fair to say that you were brought in to fix a situation that was broken?

Well, we were certainly brought in to bring it all together. I mean, there were elements of it that had not done well. There were elements that were broken. There were also elements that had done well. So what we needed to do, again, was to do a comprehensive look. ...

We were brought in to take all of these efforts, the efforts that the divisions were overseeing, the efforts that CPA [Coalition Provisional Authority] was overseeing, the efforts to stand up police and military and so forth, [and to] have one overarching headquarters that would be responsible to the new Multi-National Force-Iraq [MNFI] headquarters. ...

There was a lot going on, and we built on that. ... It was a matter of getting common standards across the board, a common approach. In many cases we added new rigor to some of the training, or different standards to it, or higher level of equipping. We brought a considerable amount of additional people to bear on this, because again, you're talking about an enormous effort. This is not a traditional security assistance effort. This is helping a sovereign nation of 27 to 30 million people re-establish not just battalions, brigades and divisions, but all the institutions that support that -- all of the training institutions, military academies, staff colleges, centers for leadership and ethics, centers for lessons learned, not to mention the parts system, the maintenance system, the infrastructure, the tools, the training. It's a massive endeavor.

Had we failed by not coming in with a comprehensive approach a year earlier?
Some of this [sectarian human rights abuses] may have been a result of acceleration of the formation of these [police] units É obviously, it made vetting more difficult.

Well, clearly at this point in time, there was a need for a comprehensive approach. I'll leave it to the historians to say what, perhaps, other organizations could have brought in at various times. ...

Between the police and the army, what did you recognize as your bigger challenge?

Well, the police have always been the bigger challenge in any such endeavor. I've studied the history and so forth of other counterinsurgency efforts, and police are always very challenging because they are local. They are individuals; they're not units. When you're battling barbaric insurgents and terrorists as were in Iraq in 2004, 2005 and still now, you really need forces that can be tough, that have unity. They are units; they're not just individuals. In a situation where individuals and their families who live in that community can be intimidated, it's very difficult to develop those forces and to get them stood up. That's why there was a need for a more robust army structure, to augment and try to provide the security space in which that training, recruiting, equipping and operating could go forward, and also the need for what have now become the National Police as well. ...

You're talking about the commandos that were formed --

The police commandos and the public order battalions and the police mechanized units, now all called National Police.

These are special forces, special police?

They are police units. That's the key. They're not just individual cops; they're not just individual departments. They are actual paramilitary units, like Carabinieri [Italian military police]/gendarmerie [armed French police]. We actually, interestingly, don't have something like that in the United States, although we have some special units, and we have SWAT teams and others. But these are actually police units that exist to support internal security in the area.

We had discussed it with Minister [Falah al-]Naqib. He was very, very enthusiastic about it. He wanted very much to accelerate the process of their development, and did accelerate their development. Remember, he was a Sunni Arab who felt very much the weight of responsibility to respond to what was, by and large, a Sunni Arab insurgency.

 

[Byblyk]

When their oil reserves have been depleted.

 

[Queasy]

Originally posted by: RightIsWrong

Originally posted by: Queasy

Oh, and about Patreus' fabulous plan that is now working....You guys do realize that it was Patreus that was in charge of training of the Iraqi army in the first place before his promotion, right?

Did he feel that the training regimen was inadequate while he was supposed to be implementing it and didn't have the stones to stand up to the Bush admin and tell them? If he hasn't made any wholesale changes in the plan and felt that it was a viable solution to the training needs, was he just incompetent and unable to implement it himself?

Petraeus was not in charge of training the Iraqi forces originally. That was another General. Petraeus practically had to scrap everything and start all over.

Link

The Coalition Military Assistance Training Team (headed by Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton) was the organization set up by the United States military with the responsibility of training and development of the new army. In June 2004, it was dissolved and forced to pass on that responsibility to the MNSTC-I (initially headed by Lt. Gen. David Petraeus) due to its focus on developing the military for traditional defense from a hypothetical invasion by its neighbors rather than providing security for the Iraqi people from the emerging threat posed by the Iraqi insurgency [18].

Petraeus is the one that wrote the current book on counter-insurgency operations btw.

So you are saying that from 2004 until 2007 when he took over command, he wasn't in charge of training? Maybe you should alert him to that fact?

When did I say that? I said that there was another general prior to Petraeus that was in charge of training. The training plan that he had instituted failed. Miserably as witnessed by the first offensive on Fallujah that saw Iraqi Army personnel abandon the battlefied.

After scrapping the Iraqi military and trying to rebuild it from scratch, having to reinstitute a training plan was tremendous setback. But that's what the military did under Petraeus' watch at the time.

I don't know how many military organizations can build an entire Army and Police force from nothing and having it running overnight. Throw in the fact that this was done in Iraq with the language differences, cultural differences, while they were getting shot at and worse, etc. Setbacks and missteps are inevitable in these conditions and are actually the norm when you look back over military history. The question is how quickly can you adapt and correct the mistakes. The Iraqi Security forces have been getting much better as witnessed by the fact that they now are in charge of security in places like Fallujah (where they had previously fled) and are the leading force on many military operations with American forces providing support. I'm not saying things are perfect and that there still isn't a way to go, but you can definitely see the progress.

 

[jackschmittusa]

TastesLikeChicken

btw, we didn't train much of a military for either Germany or Japan after WW2 and I doubt that to this very day they could effectively protect their respective nations, which is why we still have tens of thousands of troops in both places. But no doubt you'll ignore those facts so you can go on one of your ridiculously toolish "Traitor in Chief" rants.

To make such a statement, you must be totally ignorant of the perceived value of stationing troops in these countries.

Bases in Japan allowed us to greatly strengthen our strategic position in Asia. They served as a great forward arsenal during the Korean conflict. Even today, it is a great counter-force to any possible Chinese aggression against Taiwan.

Bases in Germany were an in-your-face declaration to the soviets that an invasion of Western Europe would be met with extreme force by us. These bases have been used to good effect as forward arsenals in our Middle East operations for a couple of decades now.

I am reminded almost daily how many people on the right seem to have no clue about strategic thinking. Nothing the military does that is seen by the world happens in a vacuum. It always affects other actions by us and others. Failure to think strategically leads to unintended and unimagined consequences that must usually be resolved on-the-fly, often with less than desirable results.

 

[RightIsWrong]

Originally posted by: Queasy

Originally posted by: RightIsWrong

Originally posted by: Queasy

Oh, and about Patreus' fabulous plan that is now working....You guys do realize that it was Patreus that was in charge of training of the Iraqi army in the first place before his promotion, right?

Did he feel that the training regimen was inadequate while he was supposed to be implementing it and didn't have the stones to stand up to the Bush admin and tell them? If he hasn't made any wholesale changes in the plan and felt that it was a viable solution to the training needs, was he just incompetent and unable to implement it himself?

Petraeus was not in charge of training the Iraqi forces originally. That was another General. Petraeus practically had to scrap everything and start all over.

Link

The Coalition Military Assistance Training Team (headed by Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton) was the organization set up by the United States military with the responsibility of training and development of the new army. In June 2004, it was dissolved and forced to pass on that responsibility to the MNSTC-I (initially headed by Lt. Gen. David Petraeus) due to its focus on developing the military for traditional defense from a hypothetical invasion by its neighbors rather than providing security for the Iraqi people from the emerging threat posed by the Iraqi insurgency [18].

Petraeus is the one that wrote the current book on counter-insurgency operations btw.

So you are saying that from 2004 until 2007 when he took over command, he wasn't in charge of training? Maybe you should alert him to that fact?

When did I say that? I said that there was another general prior to Petraeus that was in charge of training. The training plan that he had instituted failed. Miserably as witnessed by the first offensive on Fallujah that saw Iraqi Army personnel abandon the battlefied.

After scrapping the Iraqi military and trying to rebuild it from scratch, having to reinstitute a training plan was tremendous setback. But that's what the military did under Petraeus' watch at the time.

I don't know how many military organizations can build an entire Army and Police force from nothing and having it running overnight. Throw in the fact that this was done in Iraq with the language differences, cultural differences, while they were getting shot at and worse, etc. Setbacks and missteps are inevitable in these conditions and are actually the norm when you look back over military history. The question is how quickly can you adapt and correct the mistakes. The Iraqi Security forces have been getting much better as witnessed by the fact that they now are in charge of security in places like Fallujah (where they had previously fled) and are the leading force on many military operations with American forces providing support. I'm not saying things are perfect and that there still isn't a way to go, but you can definitely see the progress.

You said it when you implied that it was Gen. Eaton that failed in training the Iraqi military and police forces while ignoring the fact that Gen. Eaton was there less than a year and Gen. Petreus was overseeing the entire process for 3+ years.

You lambaste Eaton for not getting done in less than one year what Petreus couldn't get accomplished in over three. How are you showing any intellectual honesty with that kind of conclusion?

Eaton had to deal with Bremmer's fuck up (which was directly attributed to the Pentagon and White House ( See story here )) while Petreus was given total control.

 

[TastesLikeChicken]

Originally posted by: jackschmittusa
TastesLikeChicken

btw, we didn't train much of a military for either Germany or Japan after WW2 and I doubt that to this very day they could effectively protect their respective nations, which is why we still have tens of thousands of troops in both places. But no doubt you'll ignore those facts so you can go on one of your ridiculously toolish "Traitor in Chief" rants.

To make such a statement, you must be totally ignorant of the perceived value of stationing troops in these countries.

Bases in Japan allowed us to greatly strengthen our strategic position in Asia. They served as a great forward arsenal during the Korean conflict. Even today, it is a great counter-force to any possible Chinese aggression against Taiwan.

Bases in Germany were an in-your-face declaration to the soviets that an invasion of Western Europe would be met with extreme force by us. These bases have been used to good effect as forward arsenals in our Middle East operations for a couple of decades now.

I am reminded almost daily how many people on the right seem to have no clue about strategic thinking. Nothing the military does that is seen by the world happens in a vacuum. It always affects other actions by us and others. Failure to think strategically leads to unintended and unimagined consequences that must usually be resolved on-the-fly, often with less than desirable results.

Uh, yeah. I didn't talk about Pearl Harbor or the u-boat attacks on US merchant ships either. That doesn't mean I'm ignorant about those subjects, just that they had no real relevance to training troops, just like Harvey's comments had no such relevance and neither do strategic issues.

But thanks for ginning up yet another red herring and a straw man argument to boot in a lame attempt to malign the right (of which I am not a member anyway). Continue to argue with yourself on that subject though. I'll be addressing the troop training issue, which is what this thread is about.

 

[Harvey]

Originally posted by: TastesLikeChicken

So volunteering or not for a war makes a difference how effectively we train the military of the countries we occupy after we defeat them, Harvey?

Please do tell how that red herring of yours has any effect?

Do you even bother to read what YOU post, let alone the posts to which you attempt to reply? :roll:

In your post, you attempted to equate our military presence in Japan and Germany to the situation in Iraq. IT'S NOT THE SAME! We didn't have any choice about entering WW II. It came to us. When we won that war, occupation was necessary because neither Germany and Japan had been our enemies. Not occupying their countries would have left it open for those who started the war to continue to fight us.

The Bushwhackos war of lies in Iraq was wrong from day one, and the mess they made, there, is nothing like the situation at the end of WW II. Trying to justify continued American occupation in Iraq based on our history with Germany and Japan is factually and historically invalid.

I'm sure you can make other arguements about what we should do, there. Given your history, I'm just as sure they will be just as stupid.

 

[Queasy]

Originally posted by: RightIsWrong

Originally posted by: Queasy

Originally posted by: RightIsWrong

Originally posted by: Queasy

Oh, and about Patreus' fabulous plan that is now working....You guys do realize that it was Patreus that was in charge of training of the Iraqi army in the first place before his promotion, right?

Did he feel that the training regimen was inadequate while he was supposed to be implementing it and didn't have the stones to stand up to the Bush admin and tell them? If he hasn't made any wholesale changes in the plan and felt that it was a viable solution to the training needs, was he just incompetent and unable to implement it himself?

Petraeus was not in charge of training the Iraqi forces originally. That was another General. Petraeus practically had to scrap everything and start all over.

Link

The Coalition Military Assistance Training Team (headed by Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton) was the organization set up by the United States military with the responsibility of training and development of the new army. In June 2004, it was dissolved and forced to pass on that responsibility to the MNSTC-I (initially headed by Lt. Gen. David Petraeus) due to its focus on developing the military for traditional defense from a hypothetical invasion by its neighbors rather than providing security for the Iraqi people from the emerging threat posed by the Iraqi insurgency [18].

Petraeus is the one that wrote the current book on counter-insurgency operations btw.

So you are saying that from 2004 until 2007 when he took over command, he wasn't in charge of training? Maybe you should alert him to that fact?

When did I say that? I said that there was another general prior to Petraeus that was in charge of training. The training plan that he had instituted failed. Miserably as witnessed by the first offensive on Fallujah that saw Iraqi Army personnel abandon the battlefied.

After scrapping the Iraqi military and trying to rebuild it from scratch, having to reinstitute a training plan was tremendous setback. But that's what the military did under Petraeus' watch at the time.

I don't know how many military organizations can build an entire Army and Police force from nothing and having it running overnight. Throw in the fact that this was done in Iraq with the language differences, cultural differences, while they were getting shot at and worse, etc. Setbacks and missteps are inevitable in these conditions and are actually the norm when you look back over military history. The question is how quickly can you adapt and correct the mistakes. The Iraqi Security forces have been getting much better as witnessed by the fact that they now are in charge of security in places like Fallujah (where they had previously fled) and are the leading force on many military operations with American forces providing support. I'm not saying things are perfect and that there still isn't a way to go, but you can definitely see the progress.

You said it when you implied that it was Gen. Eaton that failed in training the Iraqi military and police forces while ignoring the fact that Gen. Eaton was there less than a year and Gen. Petreus was overseeing the entire process for 3+ years.

You lambaste Eaton for not getting done in less than one year what Petreus couldn't get accomplished in over three. How are you showing any intellectual honesty with that kind of conclusion?

Eaton had to deal with Bremmer's fuck up (which was directly attributed to the Pentagon and White House ( See story here )) while Petreus was given total control.

I'm not lambasting Eaton. I'm saying that the training plan that was originally put into place (I don't even know if it was Eaton that made the plan) failed. That's not lambasting. That's a statement of fact. As mentioned in the article I linked above, that training plan was to set the Iraqi Army to deal with external threats/forces. Not to deal with an insurgency and terror tactics.

I even mention that the scrapping of the standing Iraqi Army as a reason as to why it has taken so long to train properly. So how am I being intellectually dishonest again when I'm listing all the reasons as to why there have been setbacks in the training of the Iraqi Security forces?

As I said before, military mistakes are common as documented by history. Nothing that you planned goes right on the battlefield. The question is whether you can adapt your tactics and adjust to what your enemy is doing to beat them before they beat you. Petraeus wouldn't be the first general in American history to have a failure, learn, and come back with a string of successes. And that is apparently what happened as Petraeus learned from what he saw in Iraq and wrote the current book on counter-insurgency that is seeing success in Iraq today.

For someone to say though that the Iraqi Army has not seen progress in the last three years though is being intellectually dishonest. The Iraqi Security Forces are the ones providing security across much of Iraq. They are the ones sitting in Sadr City now. A majority of the units are leading operations with American forces providing support. As I said, things aren't perfect but you can't ignore the improvement.

 

[TastesLikeChicken]

Originally posted by: Harvey

Originally posted by: TastesLikeChicken

So volunteering or not for a war makes a difference how effectively we train the military of the countries we occupy after we defeat them, Harvey?

Please do tell how that red herring of yours has any effect?

Do you even bother to read what YOU post, let alone the posts to which you attempt to reply? :roll:

In your post, you attempted to equate our military presence in Japan and Germany to the situation in Iraq. IT'S NOT THE SAME! We didn't have any choice about entering WW II. It came to us. When we won that war, occupation was necessary because neither Germany and Japan had been our enemies. Not occupying their countries would have left it open for those who started the war to continue to fight us.

The Bushwhackos war of lies in Iraq was wrong from day one, and the mess they made, there, is nothing like the situation at the end of WW II. Trying to justify continued American occupation in Iraq based on our history with Germany and Japan is factually and historically invalid.

I'm sure you can make other arguements about what we should do, there. Given your history, I'm just as sure they will be just as stupid.

😕

Did you even bother to read the OP? It was the OP that brought up WW2. I addressed the fallacy of the comparison, as many others have, so stop being such a knee-jerk fool.

 

[Zebo]

There is no such thing as an 'Iraqi' - there are Sunni Arabs and Shi?a Arabs and Kurds. They are not risking thier lives for ?Iraq.? The Americans can do that. Iraq's most effective and trained corps (very effective and well trained) are the sectarian militias who only join the 'Iraqi Army' to steal weapons, gain money or their party happens to be in power and they can impose their will on the people out of power under the guise of 'state'. Make no mistake there will never be a 'multicultural' type Army like many countries have in Iraq. It's all or nothing. Victor and the vanquished/subjugated.

 

[Lemon law]

As usual more chest thumping ego from Palehorse74 with---Raising an Army of professional bullet-stoppers is the easy part; but, building said Army into an effective modern fighting force takes years, and requires leadership with experience!

Do you think it's any different for the average OBC or AIT graduate in the US Army? Can you imagine what an entire Army of fresh graduates would be like!? They'd get annihilated on the streets of Iraq!

We can't, and won't, let that happen to the ING.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

What palehorse74 says would be credible if our military professionals understood what a military occupation required in our military occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Credit where credit is due, our professional military totally understood how to win a war, but if I could pick a IMHO poster child of a member of our military who totally does not understand how to win the peace in an occupation, someone like Palehorse74 only ranks marginally above Charles Granger and the recent idiot sniper who used the Koran for target practice.

Thankfully we have a plethora of more innovative types in our military. And to some extent, if we had used Petraeus earlier, things would be better. But we didn't and now we are still fighting partly Plalehorse74 stinking thinking. And no amount of palehorse74 chest thumping can smokescreen the miserable results.

Being professionals still can't disguise the fact that the there is no pride in being a professional failure. Only the few, the clueless, can deny reality.

 

[palehorse]

Originally posted by: Lemon law
Credit where credit is due, our professional military totally understood how to win a war, but if I could pick a IMHO poster child of a member of our military who totally does not understand how to win the peace in an occupation, someone like Palehorse74 only ranks marginally above Charles Granger and the recent idiot sniper who used the Koran for target practice.

Thankfully we have a plethora of more innovative types in our military. And to some extent, if we had used Petraeus earlier, things would be better. But we didn't and now we are still fighting partly Plalehorse74 stinking thinking. And no amount of palehorse74 chest thumping can smokescreen the miserable results.

Being professionals still can't disguise the fact that the there is no pride in being a professional failure. Only the few, the clueless, can deny reality.

nice rant, but I dont see anything in there that speaks to the training factors I was describing above. Try to put aside your hatred of me long enough to stay on topic.. k? good...

The fact of the matter is that the ING, as a whole, is being trained at a pace, and to a level, that will allow them to survive on their own after we're long gone, whenever that might be.

 

[Lemon law]

The latest Palehorse74 revisionist history fantasy is-------The fact of the matter is that the ING, as a whole, is being trained at a pace, and to a level, that will allow them to survive on their own after we're long gone, whenever that might be.

Yes, tell us all about the somewhat similar South Vietnamese army that repelled the North Vietnamese after Nixon proclaimed peace with honor. Or our CIA trained Iranian army that did so much to keep the Shah of Iran in power after the Shah managed to alienate everyone.

Get a clue, its not as much a matter of military training as it is a matter of playing the the right tune for the people of the nation. All the training in the world is worthless if the troops are not motivated. And if the motivations are more ethnic cleansing rather than national purpose, we are talking totally counterproductive.

 

[jackschmittusa]

TastesLikeChicken

Perhaps you have a reading comprehension problem.

I called BS on your contention that we maintain bases in Japan and Germany "because we didn't train them well enough".

Nice try at deflecting though.

 

[TastesLikeChicken]

Originally posted by: jackschmittusa
TastesLikeChicken

Perhaps you have a reading comprehension problem.

I called BS on your contention that we maintain bases in Japan and Germany "because we didn't train them well enough".

Nice try at deflecting though.

I don't believe I'm the one with the reading comprehension. btw, if you're going to quote my statements then quote what I actually said and not the made up tripe you typed above. Here's what I said:

btw, we didn't train much of a military for either Germany or Japan after WW2 and I doubt that to this very day they could effectively protect their respective nations, which is why we still have tens of thousands of troops in both places.

I said nothing about training them "well." What I said was that we didn't allow either Germany or Japan to have much of a military after WW2. A major mistake after WW1 was allowing Germany to re-build its military-industrial complex. We didn't make that mistake again.

btw, I trained with German toops myself back in the 80s. They are well trained and disciplined. However, their force numers are still not significant enough to withstand any major invasion without our help.

As far as strategy, I've spoken about strategy a number of times in this forum, specifically the strategy of being in Iraq and how that may have been the real impetus behind the invasion. Of course, when I bring up that issue the anti-war types suddenly make themselves scarce. So pontificating to me about strategy is preaching to the chorus.

 

[jackschmittusa]

Germany and Japan could assemble whatever they wanted for military forces. They may well have capitalized on the fact that we maintain such large forces and saved much by spending less on their own.

There is still no merit to your argument that we are there because they are weak. We are there because we find it to be strategically advantageous.

 

[TastesLikeChicken]

Originally posted by: jackschmittusa
Germany and Japan could assemble whatever they wanted for military forces. They may well have capitalized on the fact that we maintain such large forces and saved much by spending less on their own.

There is still no merit to your argument that we are there because they are weak. We are there because we find it to be strategically advantageous.

No, Germany and Japan could not assemble whatever forces they wanted. Japan had a constitutional provision called the peace clause (Article 9) that prevented force buildups. Germany is STILL restricted to this very day to a combined military force of 370,000 personnel by the Treaty on the Final Ressettlement with Respect to Germany. We didn't even return full sovereignty to German until their reunification. Prior to that the Potsdam Agreement effectively prevented Germany from any military force buildups.

My argument is plenty strong. Your knowledge on the subject is what is weak.

 

[Lemon law]

In my mind, both Jackschmittusa and TLC have their points. Perhaps the biggest flaw in the TLC position is in assuming a treaty or constitutional provision will trump a real necessity. During WW1, the war to end all wars, the treaties of that war barely lasted a dozen years. As it is, the GWB run up to gulf war 2 severely strained US German relations, Nato can soon start collecting social security as its starts getting senile, China is starting to build up its military which may force Japan to rethink its own constitutional provisions, and all around us the world we knew is changing. To the hide bound conservative this change is always greeted with horror, but as the USA has a greatly diminished capacity to maintain the status quo, changes of all kinds may be mandated by need.

The jackschmittusa argument weakness may be in---There is still no merit to your argument that we are there because they are weak. We are there because we find it to be strategically advantageous.

The point being, we still have bases in Japan and Germany because these countries find it to their advantage to permit it. We used to have bases in the Philippine Islands until they kicked us out. Increasingly, many countries are not allowing US military bases on or near them. We are skating on very thin ice in Pakistan and we thought Turkey would allow us to use their soil to help topple Saddam, until at the last minute, their legislature slammed the door on that. Its just another case of the world we knew keeps on a changing. And who knows, as India and China start flexing their economic and maybe military power, it may again become fashionable to have US military bases near by.

 

[dphantom]

Originally posted by: Lemon law
In my mind, both Jackschmittusa and TLC have their points. Perhaps the biggest flaw in the TLC position is in assuming a treaty or constitutional provision will trump a real necessity. During WW1, the war to end all wars, the treaties of that war barely lasted a dozen years. As it is, the GWB run up to gulf war 2 severely strained US German relations, Nato can soon start collecting social security as its starts getting senile, China is starting to build up its military which may force Japan to rethink its own constitutional provisions, and all around us the world we knew is changing. To the hide bound conservative this change is always greeted with horror, but as the USA has a greatly diminished capacity to maintain the status quo, changes of all kinds may be mandated by need.

The jackschmittusa argument weakness may be in---There is still no merit to your argument that we are there because they are weak. We are there because we find it to be strategically advantageous.

The point being, we still have bases in Japan and Germany because these countries find it to their advantage to permit it. We used to have bases in the Philippine Islands until they kicked us out. Increasingly, many countries are not allowing US military bases on or near them. We are skating on very thin ice in Pakistan and we thought Turkey would allow us to use their soil to help topple Saddam, until at the last minute, their legislature slammed the door on that. Its just another case of the world we knew keeps on a changing. And who knows, as India and China start flexing their economic and maybe military power, it may again become fashionable to have US military bases near by.

LL's last paragraph is pretty accurate. No country will allow us to maintain bases unless it is also in their strategic advantage to do so. We can wave a lot of carrots, but ultimately it will be the host countries decision.

 

[jackschmittusa]

Japan could change its constitution if it so desired. As has been pointed out by another, there has been significant talk of doing so.

Germany's troop levels are governed by the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe. Not only did they volunteer numbers for the treaty, but the treaty has been falling apart for some time. It is primarily seen as a treaty between the Russians (originally Warsaw Pact) and NATO. Russia has already suspended compliance with the treaty. NATO members can't agree. Even the U.S. has been accused of violating the treaty (with good probable cause). Numerous other complaints of non-compliance have been lodged with little effect. Though there would likely be political fallout if the Germans violated the treaty, I doubt that much else would happen if they decided to.

And yes, we remain in those countries because they allow us to, but our decision to remain is because of our perceived strategic advantage, not because they are weak. The very purpose of the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe was to weaken everybody.

 

[dphantom]

To get back to the point of the OPs posting, Iraq has stood up 12 divisions with one more forming. The next steps need to be the formation of Corps level units to provide coordination, communication, planning and logistical support.

Petraeus, after Bremer's fiasco of disbanding the entire Iraqi army, had to start from scratch wasting months if not a year of time.

So over the last 3 years or so, we can see the above results. They are IMO pretty impressive. Iraqi forces are nowhere near the level of Western armies and they have significant ethnic issues to overcome. But they are taking a larger role and in more cases than not, can hold their own after US trooops set them up.

Still, a long way to go, but to have this number of troops operational after just 3 years or so is quite impressive.

The US is going to stand up 6 more brigades and it is supposed to take us several years for that. So compare what the US can do to increase its Army compared to the Iraqi's and the progress made to date is very good.