Any SLA Marshall Fans Out There?

"It hasn't gone well. We've had almost one year of no progress," Army Maj. Gen. Paul D. Eaton tells the AP. Eaton, who is leaving Iraq next week, has spent the past year putting together and training Iraq's 200,000 army, police and civil defense troops. He says, "We've had the wrong training focus—on individual cops rather than their leaders."

Eaton, a plainspoken officer who didn't shirk responsibility for his role in the problems, said soldiers of Iraq's 2nd Brigade simply ignored U.S. orders to fight their countrymen.

"They basically quit. They told us, 'We're an army for external defense and you want us to go to Fallujah?' That was a personal mistake on my part," Eaton said.

When the uprising broke out in Fallujah, Eaton said he saw a chance to begin transferring the security mission to Iraqi forces. He agreed to allow the Iraqi army's just-created 2nd Brigade to take on guerrillas that had seized control of the restive western city.

The lesson learned was that the soldiers needed an Iraqi command hierarchy. Eaton said the soldiers may have battled Fallujah's Sunni Muslim rebels if Iraqi leaders were spurring them on.

Comments

[James]

One is reminded of the Vietnam-era comment that the US could provide the Vietnamese soldier with everything he needed, except a reason to fight.

The US considered it simply obvious that the average Vietnamese would join the global fight against Communism, while the Hanoi government considered it obvious that the average Vietnamese would join the fight against the foreign invader. Turns out the Hanoi government was right.

Now the US considers it obvious that the average Iraqi is opposed to Baathism, or Islamic fundamentalism, or whatever the enemy -ism of the week is, while the guerrillas assume that the average Iraqi is opposed to heavily-armed foreigners rolling through their cities. So far, the resistance is right.

Will handpicking a strongman with ties to the intelligence agencies of the country that engineered the sanctions, the invasion, and the occupation give the average Iraqi the feeling that he has something to fight for? Surveys say "no" but virtually all American foreign policy appears to be a triumph of hope over experience. Though it's treason to point out the obvious, these days.

[Neb Okla]

"We're an army for external defense and you want us to go to Fallujah?"

...not something you heard from the National Guard after the governor delcared "preemptive martial law" and the government spent $100,000 per protester at the G8 summit in Georgia.

To hear some talk about it, we're supposed to be giving Iraqi's the gift of Democracy - but at least when it comes to our most basic rights it seems a little like the student teaching the teacher (well, if the teacher actually had a clue and wasn't so full of it's teaching position and 227 years of exerpeience to learn anything).

I've also heard that each household in Iraq is allowed to own an assault rifle for it's defense. It's allowed here too after you fill out a mountain of paperwork and get the approval of your Sheriff.