More U.S. troops on the ground in Iraq? Washington Post.

An Iraqi soldier training with an RPG. Washington Post/EPA.

The Obama administration is considering deploying more troops to help train Iraqi troops in the fight against ISIS. Washington Post. The increase in troops would be "modest" and would add to the roughly 3000 troops already in Iraq. Obama has called for more international troops to help with training as well. The move comes after the Iraqi Army was routed in Ramadi. The army has been beset with morale and discipline issues as far back as the battle of Mosul. Though the Obama administration has no major plans for changes in the mission, they are hoping to train more Sunni troops in Anbar province. More information about the make up and numbers of troops to be deployed will be announced next week.

My Comment:

This sounds like a classic sunk cost fallacy. Our training programs have failed to this point of the war so obviously the solution is to do even more training programs. Gotta throw good money after bad after all. It's so very typical of the Obama administration. It looks like we are doing something, and that's the important thing, even if it doesn't work.

And I really doubt that it will work. The Iraqi Army's lack of training is only part of the reason they are failing so badly. Here's the short list:

1. They have poor leadership. Most of the experienced officers left over from the old regime are actually on the other side working for ISIS. Most of the officers they have that are good are at the lower ranks, but at the higher ranks they have very little in the way of experience. Most of them are political appointees. This is a problem that only time will solve

2. The Army is divided on sectarian lines. Nuri al-Malki famously purged the military of any Sunni officers and replaced them with more politically reliable Shiite officers. This led to the rank and file Sunni soldiers leaving as well. The effort to bring more Sunnis into the military might help but the damage is done. 

3. They have no effective tactics against car bombs. I just talked about how effective ISIS has been in converting Humvees into car bombs. To be fair to the Iraqi's I don't think any military has an effective counter against mass car bomb attacks.

4. They just don't have the numbers anymore. The capture of Mosul pretty much destroyed the Iraqi Army as an organization. They lost so many men, equipment and weapons that they are a shell of what they used to be. Ramadi was just the final nail in the coffin. The Kurds and the Shia militias are the main fighting forces left.

5. They need direct air support. When ISIS has failed it is largely because they had to face combined arms tactics. A ground assault isn't enough to push them back, they also need to face withering airstrikes. Though the airstrikes have had a major effect, the coordination between Iraq and the United States is severely lacking. There are no forward air controllers on the ground and the Iraqis have little to no air support of their own. 

I don't think a token increase in trainers will do anything to resolve any of those problems. They might help a little bit, but not enough to turn the tide. But the political and economic costs of fixing any of these problems are too high for the Obama administration to pay. What is needed is a fighting force that doesn't have any of these problems (except point #3, which seems very hard to resolve). That means foreign troops and, so far, that is a no go for the United States.