....never fired....only dropped once.
The pride of the 10th Annual Baghdad Jaycees Goat Roast and Labor Day Parade has proven they aren't worth a damn when it comes to defending their country.
Observations of a non-military man: What is it about middle eastern / Arab armies that makes them such lousy soldiers? I've read that the Egyptian Army fought fairly well at the opening of the Yom Kippur War with Israel in 1973, but other than that they seem to fold up like a card table when faced with anyone actually shooting at them. Snappy parade performers, lousy fighters.
After investing a decade of our time, thousands of American lives, and hundreds of billions of dollars helping get Iraq to the point they can become a self-sufficient, stable, law-abiding citizen of the world, it seems they can't even stand up to the first hint of determined opposition they faced.
Shades of the Fall of Saigon! Al Qaeda affiliated rebels have seized control of the northern city of Mosul while the Iraqi Army was loading up and making a run for it.
Now the insurgents are even in control of a formidable armored force left by the Americans for and now abandoned by the Iraqis. Emboldened, the insurgents are now marching towards Baghdad while the Iraqi Army is melting away.
It's a sad situation. On the one hand I feel sorry for all the downtrodden in the region, all the women who are treated little better than cattle, the little girls who are denied an education, etc, but the bottom line is it seems beyond our ability, anyone's ability, to bring them into the 21st 20th 19th Century.
Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and all the rest are simply from a different branch of the Homo Sapien family tree. Our values are irreconcilable, our brains wired differently. We can build them all the sewer treatment plants they could possibly use, but they're still gonna crap on the sidewalk. The only reason we have anything to do with them at all is because of a freak of geography....they're sitting atop an ocean of oil.
I say we learn to live without their black gold, keep far, far away from them all, and let them stew in their own juices. F___ 'em.
S
