No Ground Troops? Don’t Bet on It. The Iraqi Army Is In No Shape to Fight ISIS.

When President Obama committed the United States
to “degrade and ultimately destroy the terrorist group known as
ISIL [ISIS]” in a
speech on September 10, he promised a
body bag-weary American public that the effort “will not
involve American combat troops fighting on foreign soil.” Well,
maybe. Yesterday’s air
and missile strikes against ISIS in Syria certainly abided by
that guarantee even as it widened efforts against the murderous
group/budding shithole of a country. But the ongoing collapse of
the Iraqi Army raises the question of just who will supply
troops on the ground even as America rains death from the air.

Sunday,
hundreds of Iraqi soldiers went missing—believed dead, grabbed,
or bugged out—after their base, Camp Saqlawiyah, fell to a siege by
ISIS forces.

This isn’t the first fiasco suffered by the Iraqi Army in
opposing ISIS. The militant group has acquired modern American
weapons from fleeing Iraqi troops.
Kirkuk Air Base fell when “Iraqi forces fled, stripping off
their uniforms and discarding them in the dirt” before the enemy
even approached the place.

Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, says

about half the Iraqi Army isn’t up to the job.

That may be why, before the bombs started falling in Syria,
former Defense Secretary Robert Gates
suggested on Sunday that “some small number of American
advisers, trainers, special forces and forward spotters for air
controllers are going to have to be in harm’s way.”

Former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair
makes the same point, saying, “this is the hard truth—airpower
alone will not suffice.”

Some U.S. lawmakers are
ready, and even eager, to follow up on that idea.

So far, President Obama is sticking by his promise that combat
troops won’t be committed against ISIS. But if local forces
continue to flee the field when ISIS shows up, look for the
president to “reluctantly” give in to the pressure to extend
America’s involvement in an Iraq War that just won’t end.

Maybe the United States really needs to make a full-on
commitment to defeating ISIS—it’s a brutal group without doubt. But
that’s a discussion that should take place honestly, without coy
assurances of a bloodless (for Americans) conflict. And it should
be openly debated in Congress.