How would you like it if the Islamic State took control of Colorado Springs? Or Silverthorne? Or the northern edge of Fort Collins? They’re all about as far from the heart of Denver as the desert city of Ramadi is from Baghdad.
Suddenly, 70 miles doesn’t sound so safe.
Yet now that the Islamic State has overrun Ramadi, 70 more miles is all those barbarians would have to cover to clobber Iraq’s capital, Baghdad.
And thanks to the feckless Iraqi Army, they are in a plausible position to take it. Not only because they now hold sway over an even bigger piece of Iraq, but because when Iraqi soldiers ran from Ramadi, they surrendered more military equipment to the Islamic State — tanks and trucks, machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades. Mostly supplied by us, by the way.
It’s part of a petrifying pattern. A few months ago, I wrote,”The Iraqi military plans to recapture from the Islamic State the key supply-line city of Mosul.” But then I asked, cynically, “How’s that going?” The answer was, and still is, nowhere. In January, both Iraq’s leaders and America’s were talking tough, saying that by now the good guys would be back in charge of that city, which had first been stormed by the Islamic State when Iraq’s soldiers (and this will sound familiar) fell back in a frenetic retreat.
They still don’t get it. Right after the rout in Ramadi, White House press secretary Josh Earnest cavalierly asked, “Are we going to light our hair on fire every time that there is a setback in the campaign against ISIL?” (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant). The answer ought to be, “If we don’t, they might.”
To be magnanimous, maybe the myopic optimists who expect Iraq’s forces to put up a fight just don’t understand this: The soldiers don’t capitulate because they’re poorly trained, poorly armed, or poorly led. They capitulate because they’re poorly motivated.
During the first Gulf War, I was with a platoon of American GIs in Saudi Arabia moving toward Kuwait. But our transport broke down, and we were stuck on the desert until the next day when we could be rescued. It wasn’t so bad; some of the soldiers did target practice with their bayonets every time a desert tarantula surfaced from a hole.
It gave me a chance to talk with these soldiers about what motivated them to join the Army. This was before 9/11, so it wasn’t to go after people who had attacked us. It was to learn motorpool skills on Uncle Sam’s dime, or maybe qualify for the GI Bill. When they’d volunteered for service, we weren’t even fighting a war.
But when I asked each soldier whether he’d be willing to rush a bunker if Saddam Hussein was inside, to the last man the answer was “yes.”
You won’t find much of that in the Iraqi Army or, frankly, any other army in the region. In that part of the world, people are loyal to their families, their tribes, their religions. But their governments, their nations? Not so much. The army’s just a paycheck. When a madman with a Koran strapped to his chest starts chasing you, you don’t stand and fight; you run.
That’s why the Islamic State might take those next 70 miles to Baghdad. And then, if they establish an Eden for extremism, our own security becomes shakier than ever.
Greg Dobbs of Evergreen was a correspondent for ABC News for 23 years, then for HDNet television’s “World Report.”
To send a letter to the editor about this article, submit or check out our for how to submit by e-mail or mail.
