Originally Posted by
Skroe
The "disbanding the Iraqi army" fable is a half truth.
In the Western world, we have one armed forces, that defend the state. In Middle Eastern dictatorships this is not the case. In Saudi Arabia for example, there is the defense forces, but there is also the "National Guard", which is controlled by the Interior Ministry, and whose personnel are pulled from the ruling Family's tribe and loyal tribes. They are given the best weapons and the best training, and exist to defend the House of Saud and it's rule, not the state.
Iraq was the same.
The "Iraqi Army" has 375,000 troops drawn from all segments of Iraqi Army. They were poorly trained and poorly equipped. The US military generally avoided fighting them, and when they were engaged they normally fled.
The "Iraqi Republican Guard" had 50,000 troops and, like the Saudi National Guard, was drawn from Saddam's tribes and loyal trials in and around Tikrit. They were given the best training and best equipment. The US Military largely destroyed the Iraqi Republican Guard in battle.
The Iraqi "Special Republican Guard" was an elite special warfare unit of 10,000 troops, that engaged in terrorist-like operations during the invasion. They were largely destroyed as well.
So Iraq had 3 different defense levels, with the largest level being mostly just a lot of manpower.
The "disband" order was directed mostly at the remaining Republican Guard formations for which the US-led coalition, under international law, was now legally responsible for. The "Iraqi Army" proper had almost entirely disintegrated by that point, as soldiers took off their uniforms and went home and their equipment and undefended bases/depots were looted. As far as the 375,000 person army was concerned, the disband order was a recognition of reality. As far as the Republican Guard was concerned, most of it's soldiers were dead or prisoners of war, and those that weren't were Saddam's thugs for years, and would be seen as illegitimate.
In many ways, the disbanding of the 375,000 person Army mirrors what happened years later versus ISIS. Iraqis from all walks of life wouldn't fight for Iraq then. And they wouldn't fight for Iraq now.
No. This is a gross exaggeration, perpetuated as a political argument by those who want to create a logical "what goes around comes around fable" about US interventions.
The truth of the matter is elements of Saddam's Republican and Special Republican Guard joined Al Qaeda in Iraq, as did Sunni fundamentalists, after the 2003 invasion and fought for many years. However we're taking a few hundred people, and most of them were dead or quit, by the time the surge successfully ended and Al Qaeda in Iraq Was defeated.
ISIS, which emerged from the ashes of the defeated Al Qaeda in Iraq, but is a distinct entity, when it started had a core of around 20 ex-Saddam regime figures, out of a ruling group of around 300 individuals. The degree to which these people are still alive or involved is unknown, but several prominent ex-regime figures have been killed or apprehended in the past two years.
This makes a lot of sense if you think about it for a moment. The Iraq War was already 13 years ago yesterday. If you were a 30 year old soldier then, you're 43 now. If you were a 37 year old oficer, you're 50 now. And you would have had to somehow had to survive 13 years of war.
The bulk of ISIS is people in their 20s and early 30s. They were pre-teens or teenagers when the Iraq War was launched, at best. The "Iraqi Army became ISIS" political myth pretends that people don't age. Well they do. And Saddam's disbanded Army isn't exactly spring chickens any more. Hell I'm 32. I miss the athleticism of my 19 year old self. There's a difference.