So, it seems, we are signed up for our third Iraq war in 20-odd years. Obviously, this isn’t because the last two turned out brilliantly. So, what is the reasoning here? More precisely, given that Australia’s policy is just to follow the US without question, what is the reasoning of the world leaders, most importantly Obama, who are pushing this war? There seem to be two main points here
* ISIS/ISIL are barbaric terrorists who behead hostages. That’s a good reason for trying to capture and try those responsible, and perhaps for trying to kill them if that’s not possible. But there’s nothing special about this particular group. There are plenty of barbaric terrorists out there. And one of our leading allies in the fight, Saudi Arabia, routinely beheads people for such crimes as apostasy and “sorcery”. None of this justifies a war that is going to cost tens of billions of dollars (Australia alone looks to be up for several billion, assuming a long war) and an unknowable, but potentially large, number of lives.
* ISIS/ISIL threaten to take over large non-Sunni areas of Iraq and undertake ethnic/religious cleansing. That threat looked like a significant a month or two ago. But some limited air support for Kurdish and Shia militias appears to have turned the tide. As far as I can tell, ISIS/ISIL are now confined to Sunni areas where they have a fair degree of popular support. Changing that will be a costly and bloody business.
I expect most readers here will agree with me, and don’t plan to argue about with those who haven’t learned from the past. But I would like a pointer to any serious analysis making the case for a new war.
John Quiggin 
The “plague on them all” attitude of isolationism except where our own direct national interest is at stake would lead to no involvement here. But choosing national interest as a higher value over a human needs-based policy is itself an ethical compromise, and callous and inhumane in my opinion if applied rigidly. Discrete and confined interventions to rescue groups from imminent slaughter, such as the recent Yazidi example, seem to have “just war” features to me, but these are the exception.
This “responsibility to protect” doctrine (R2P) promoted by Gareth Evans and others sounds good in principle, but led to bombing Belgrade to save the Kossovars IIRC. William Shawcross’s book Deliver Us from Evil was a shocking book about UN deficiencies.
Makes you wonder now if the Yazidi rescue was just to provide a halo effect for the resulting decision, as our own Defence Minister a couple of days ago was making comments which sounded like he was promoting a new Crusade.
Intervention from outside as an application of power by forces with disingenuous motivations is no solution.
David Johnston the Defence Minister said on 7.30 Report on Monday night, “we will disrupt and potentially destroy what is in the minds of the leadership of ISIL, and that is, to set up a separate caliphate state that is ruled by sharia law and all of the things that go with that. Now, we have legitimate states in Syria, Turkey, Jordan and Iraq. …They have slaughtered and crucified, if I might say, a number of people…all of these sorts of atrocities must be dealt with by right-thinking nations.”
Syria is a legitimate state? “Crucified”?
Depends on your tastes a bit doesn’t it? We’re just idiots here in Oz because we elected an idiot PM. No future in trying to defend idiocy.
otoh Obama is not a fool, his own speech (edited of the politically motivated emotive nonsense) makes the case well enough, and Michael Tomasky agreed yesterday: thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/09/15/please-let-s-not-destroy-isis.html
Can someone explain to me how we can lack the money to help poor people here but suddenly we can find a lot of money to kill poor people over there?
These wars have ruined, for many more decades to come, the chances of positive economic and social development in the Middle East. At home, the cost of these wars in terms of economic development opportunities must be enormous.
I suspect that the three or four trillion dollars, at least, spent on these wars would have made a noticeable difference to renewable energy and humanitarian aid (not military aid) to to poorer nations.
I read somewhere that the cost of 1 modern jet fighter would build and run for a year a small hospital in Africa. The sticker cost of the average jet fighter in the NATO area was US $112 million in 2006. We could say now it’s US $125 million. I assume US $125 million would build and run a small hospital in Liberia for a year. US/NATO combined would have something like 3,000 jet fighters or more. I imagine 2,000 would be enough if they didn’t keep attacking the Middle East. That alone could mean 1,000 new hospitals in Africa. Shave off 1/3 of the rest of the military budget and if that didn’t allow building of 10,000 hospitals in Africa I would be surprised.
Try a search for “who is arming isis” for an interesting perspective.
It looks to me like it’s about appearing strong and in control for the home audience – aided and abetted by excessive optimism in military superiority and force and the outcomes of arming of enemies of our enemies. There is little interest in learning from the unwanted, but entirely predictable consequences of previous interventions. Including the consequences of external powers providing an abundance of military hardware – that doesn’t stay where intended or get used with sound judgment and restraint that the believers in good violence hope or expect.
An Australian FA-18 Hornet skims over the desert. Its mission is to help our Kurdish allies repel the malign forces of ISIL. Far below it sees a knot of soldiers – ISIL forces mortaring a group of Peshmerga over the hill. The Australian fighter swoops in and unleashes a smart bomb that blinks out the mortar and its platoon of artillerymen.
That’s the kind of thing that’s going to be happening a lot from now on. And, leaving out of it any consideration of strategy or tactics or ethics or politics, it’s an example of dealing with a problem by throwing money at it, and an example of how governments have absolutely no objection to that provided somebody gets killed in the process.
The plane itself ticks off $2,800 dollars an hour, every hour, in capital costs just sitting on the ground, so I suppose the extra $15,000 per hour it costs when actually moving isn’t as wasteful as it seems. The smart bomb, on the other hand, cost $55,000, while the mortar cost only $10,000 (not that ISIL actually paid for it, either) – sledgehammer, meet nut.
We’re all familiar with the metrics that are brought out when we bring forward proposals for social improvement and ask for funding. What’s the cost per life saved? Where’s the logic model that shows this is going to work? Where are the bloody committees to weigh up competing proposals? Where are the calls for outsourcing to the more efficient private sector? Not, evidently, called for here.
Next time we’re asking for government funding it’s worth remembering that Australia is an immensely rich country, with enormous resources to put behind anything it considers important. We just have to persuade the government that some things can be important without also being lethal.
Australia is in an interesting position. None of the action we take are of our own initiative – even if there is a politically driven eagerness to get involved – we can’t do it outside of US leadership. The question then is what responsibility do we have for failures and what credit can we take for any success on a mission we have little control over?
Politically it is a no-brainer for the coalition because there isn’t any accountability for the past catastrophic failures which have created the situation. Unless that is fixed then we will inevitably be involved in future conflicts there. Someone should be on trail for misleading the population over the bogus WMD’s.
I guess like most people here I was very disappointed that bill shorten immediately backed the war. I had an amusing thought, granted that bill shorten has a CIA minder constantly whispering in his ear to do US bidding, perhaps what he should have done is said “although we support US strategy we do not support Australia’s imvvement at present as we we have no confidence in the judgement of the current PM. When Labor is next in power we will join the coalition of the willing”.
Have you read the magazine Tabiq? These guys are different, they have a coherent philosophy and strategy, they are heavily armed and ambitious, and they seem to be able to recruit wherever they go. Their goal is the “liberation” of Mecca and Palestine and the extermination of Israel. They have taken a border crossing with Israel and (briefly?) captured 40 peacekeepers from one of our allies. They have murdered citizens of one of our allies. They have captured Syrian fighter jets, and a rival Islamic militant group has outflanked Damascus to the south – you can bet that rival group will be absorbed soon enough. These guys consider Hamas to be apostates and boast about terrorizing their enemies and herding them to their deaths. Their magazine has a photo spread depicting the destruction of all Shia holy sites in Mosul, and the mass murder of Syrian and Iraqi captives. Their propaganda is sophisticated and aimed at presenting a vision of self improvement and liberation to young Muslim men. They reject suicide bombing of civilians and considered terrorism as practiced by al Qaeda et al to be cowardice.
They openly boast that they would not exist but for the us invasion of Iraq. Surely it is the responsibility of the people who created this beast to destroy it? Or are so irresponsible that we won’t even try and fix the damage we have done?
As I’ve observed a few times in the past, Rudd’s failure to hold a full public inquiry into the circumstances surrounding our involvement in the 2003 invasion of Iraq was one of his most serious disappointments. If we had had one, even if only along the lines of the British inquiry, our politicians might now be a bit slower to jump again on the American bandwagon.
It’s fascinating that we will once again be “training and advising” the Iraqi military. I thought The Most Powerful Nation the World Has Ever Known (h/t John Howard) had been doing that for the last 10 years, so it’s hard to see what more a few Australians can do. What I want to know is: who is training and advising IS? Who trained and advised the Viet Cong? Who trains and advises the Taliban? Whoever they are, the Iraqis should try to get a few pointers from them, because they are obviously way more capable than our mob.
Or just possibly, no amount of training and advising will make an effective military force out of people who don’t believe their cause is worth risking death for.
Because oil interests in Kurdistan (Exxon, Chevron etc) are under threat.
Why else?
There was a famous WWW wrestling match in the 1980s in which three baddies were beating up a goody and the commentator yelled “The referee’s gotta do something even if it’s the wrong thing!”. This seems to be the current Middle East policy doctrine in Western capitals.
Jeffrey Sachs.
I reckon its fine, as long as we (read the US) don’t put *any* troops on the ground. Just do the bombing for the Kurds and the Iraqi government, but let them run the show. Put foreign soldiers into Iraq? No. Just support the locals who we like more.
Isn’t ISIS’ story pretty much exactly the same as the Wahabists who founded our close ally Saudi Arabia ~100 years ago? The local historical dynamic is famously “from the deserts prophets come” – every hundred years a new movement arises, condemns the decadence of the old movement, kicks out the current power structure, settles in, becomes decadent themselves, and so on. Is there any reason to assume ISIS wouldn’t follow the same trajectory?
John, your comment touches in an important issue. If US/Western policy defines ISIL as “our enemy” and seeks to empower “the enemies of our enemy” to defeat it, it will almost inevitably have the effect of empowering “the enemies of our enemy” to achieve other agendas that they have (such as establishing an independent Kurdistan) that may well not be to Western liking or that of the West’s regional allies, and/or may considerably complicate the politics of the region. The question then becomes whether “the West” is prepared to accept such consequences as a price worth paying for defeating ISIL, or whether some people have the idea that the intervention should be finessed to try to maximise US/Western control over the wider political outcomes.
@Faustusnotes
Great comment could we have the source please? – I tried three search engines on it.
Here the logic of this action: budget? What budget? There’s a war on and any dissent against the Australian government, on any grounds, is treasonous or if it isn’t yet it will be soon. Now line up and wave the flag for our brave boys and girls. Oh, and Tony too, because he does his morning workout with the army chaps up in the NT camp.
I don’t think bombing alone will work for two reasons. 1) their strongholds are in Syria, which we can’t bomb, and wehre they appear to have just shot down their first fighter jet – having captured airforce bases, they have probably also captured anti-aircraft defenses; and 2) in Iraq they are fighting a war of movement. Their main weapon is the Toyota technical, which is cheap and ubiquitous, and a typical attack involves hundreds of these things moving at speed, backed up by stolen tanks and heavy weapons. We can’t stop them at anything remotely resembling a cost-effective rate. Furthermore many of their victories appear to have occurred with little actual engagement – their reputation for brutality precedes them and fighters flee (the Peshmerga have done this a few times). We can maybe stall their momentum in major attacks with bombing, but they’ll simply shift to a new front inside Syria where we can’t get them.
Eventually Assad is going to see the writing on the wall and flee. Then Syria collapses and ISIS take control of the air force and border crossings into Israel. That is clearly their mid-term goal, and there is no evidence that Assad has been able to stop them in that path at any point – they have barely even slowed down in order to capture half of Iraq. Today’s media are saying we have “expanded” our air war into south-west Iraq near Baghdad – did we expand this by choice or because ISIS have expanded to a new front?
In my opinion we need to admit we cocked up and just leave them to it without wasting money on bombing them, or go all in. And since we created this situation in the first place, I can’t see how we can be morally obliged to do anything but. However, before we do that, we need to stop lecturing the Iraqis about inclusive govt and ask ourselves what *we* want to do about our support for Assad. If we don’t believe Syria is a legitimate state, why do we care about ISIS taking over Syria? If we don’t care about that, why care about Iraq? The west has no sense of its own goals in Syria, and can’t decide if it is pro- or anti-human rights there. This confusion opened the way for ISIS in the first place – we need to make a coherent policy decision, and then stick with it regardless of the “incidental” human rights consequences of that decision.
“But there’s nothing special about this particular group” except that they put their beheadings on Youtube. Oceans of invisible brutality don’t count.
It seems to me that bombing people until they develop a European modernist tradition is a totally whacky, self-defeating strategy with an extremely low chance of success. A smarter strategy would be rigorous containment of ISIS until their psychopathic government develops it own internal opposition. This is unfortunate for their constituents in the meantime – and for western politicians who want to survive by deploying aspirational geopolitical policies – but it actually has a chance of working, in the long term.
@Faustusnotes
These guys (ISIL/ISIS) are not different. They are not going to get very far. If they seriously annoy Turkey and/or Iran they will get pummeled without being shown any nicities. I doubt they can fly those jets and if they did they would be shot down staight away. They have no modern heavy armour, artillery or standard infantry divisions. They are fierce small-band fighters, good insurgents and not bad at small unit tactics. That’s about it.
They have no economy worth talking about. They have little in the way of resources other than what they have scavanged and pilfered. They have some loot it’s true. Even this would be useless if they were denied arms supplies. The fact they are getting some supplies means somebody is dealing with them. I wonder who?
This concern about ISIS/ISIL is just hysteria and a beat up to cover (as usual) the USA’s real agenda. Mind you, I am not sure what the USA’s real agenda is. What they do these days has no logic about it.
“Mind you, I am not sure what the USA’s real agenda is. What they do these days has no logic about it.”
That’s pretty typical of any massive complex system that is in decline. The system tries to maintain itself in the condition it reached at its peak, but no longer has the resources to do so. This results in a series of irrational actions in response to threats. A sensible long-term strategy is not feasible because the only acceptable long-term objectives involve continuation of a dominating role for which the capabilities no longer exist. A time usually comes when the system goes into crisis and either fragments or evolves rapidly into a very different kind of system.
The Bush and Obama presidencies have been classic case studies of the way executive power can be crippled by the characteristics of the system which the executive is trying to manage.
I’m much more interested in the thousands of western Jihadists joining ISIS/ISIL and similar groups. Fortunately Abbott is taking this issue seriously.
Meanwhile the reliably weird Greens are worried that calling ISIS/ISIL terrorists is a breach of the Racial Discrimination Act. Senator Peter Whish-Wilson says we must not demonise these people and that its prejudicial to call them terrorists.
Entering stage Left, Senator Milne suggests we gather the aggreived parties together in a circle for a workshop complete with butcher’s paper, crayons and a facilitator named Mandy.
I love our sunburnt country.
Ikonoclast, almost everything in your comment is wrong. They do have heavy armour and artillery – there is video footage online of their capture of the 121st division(?) base in Syria, where the tanks and APCs are lined up in their dozens. They have rocket artillery, light and heavy mortars, huge quantities of lightly armoured but mobile humvees and similar vehicles. This is why the RAAF is flying weapons into kurdistan – because they are outgunned and outnumbered. The US told us weeks ago that they had recaptured the dam near Mosul but they still report bombing raids on it – why? And when they destroy military units they report 1-5 destroyed or damaged. As ChrisB notes above we’re spending $15,000 an hour and $55,000 a weapon to blow up toyota pickups with a couple of guys on. You think that’s sustainable with no one on the ground to retake the land?
They also do have an economy and resources. In the towns they have full control of (e.g. Raqqa) they’re distributing Islamic aid, collecting taxes and enforcing laws. They have pictures in their magazine of the execution of drug dealers, highway bandits and adulterers. They have possession of oil fields and it is well documented that they are making money by trading oil. And if someone is giving them supplies then obviously they are trading, they have an economy. They also have a centralized command and control structure (they explicitly reject traditional small-cell terrorist tactics and destroyed other Islamic terrorist groups that employed this method). Amongst their ranks are cryptographers, interpreters and publishers – why do you think they don’t also have merchants, logistics dudes, civil engineers? Do you think doctors in Raqqa are refusing to cooperate with them?
If you think that it’s all just a beat up to cover US agenda, but you don’t know what the US agenda is, your analysis has failed. The US doesn’t have a functioning agenda in the middle east now – Obama’s agenda was to get out of Iraq and avoid further trouble, and he was telling the truth when he said they don’t have a strategy for ISIS. His desire is to return to isolationism, but strategic reality won’t let him. And he absolutely doesn’t want to redeploy ground troops, but if he doesn’t do something drastic we will lose Syria and Iraq to this mob. There will never be a functioning army in Iraq and the Shiite militias will collapse when this bunch of crazies has finished stabilizing the North. Obama has a very short time period in which to drive them back, or we are going to be seeing truly terrible things happen in Baghdad. ISIS gives Sunni soldiers an opportunity to repent and convert, but that courtesy won’t be extended to the Badr militias. Without real military support Baghdad will fall, and then we will have been responsible for a period of slaughter that will put Hussein in the shade.
I’d like to put on record that I agree with the analysis offered by John Quiggin.
ISIS are a bunch of bastards. That does not mean it’s our job to sort them out. The core purpose of the entity called “the Iraq government” ought to be to defend Iraqi territory and citizens. It is their duty not ours to deal with ISIS. If they are unwilling or unable to defend their territory and citizens then the last war was an even bigger failure than we assumed. Our government should defend our territory and our citizens not squander taxpayers money on foreign aid.
That said if Australians want to go as private individuals and fight alongside the Kurds or privately donate arms to help them then I don’t think our government should be obstructing that. And so long as they stay within the laws of war I don’t think we should punish them for doing so.
I believe the cost of keeping one US soldier on the ground is $1 million a year. That’s consistent with Abbott’s recent estimate.
The biggest estimate of the cost of the 2 wars to the USA I have seen is 11 trillion $ .Thats 4 in direct borrowings plus the future medical costs of returned service people and interest on the debt (assuming it eventually gets paid back I guess) .
Only 2 possibly good reasons I can think of for some involvement are 1) we helped create IS ,and 2) maybe IS is like the Nazis and need to be handled now . If involvement is deemed necessary killing should not be the first way of helping we try.
That’s a huge cost isn’t it John? And pointless without strategic and tactical objectives. Obama talked about re-establishing the border between Syria and Iraq. How is that going to work with a few Peshmerga irregulars? You can’t bomb a border back into being, you need soldiers. Air war in a situation like this is just like burning money. If our military establishment seriously believe the Peshmerga and the Badr militia can repel ISIS, then aerial support is fine. But they obviously can’t, and our military leaders can’t seriously believe it, so all they’re going to be doing is bombing their way to a brutal status quo. The idea that the new Iraqi govt can form a functioning military capable of standing up to ISIS, when they know that defeat means torture and execution, is silly. Today US military figures are saying it will take 8 months to train a cadre of 5000 anti-govt rebels in Syria. In 8 months time, ISIS will have absorbed the factions fighting south of Damascus, captured new swathes of territory, doubled their military strength and have reduced the Syrian govt to a small space around its capital. Those anti-govt rebels will probably melt away and take their training to ISIS, who by then are going to be the only game in town.
Gaius X (Watkin Tench?), ISIS are not terrorists. They explicitly reject terror tactics. They are a rebellion, or as the Guardian put it a proto-state. They don’t, for example, use suicide bombers against civilian targets the way that other actors do, and they seem to reserve suicide attacks only for military objectives as part of military operations. So calling them terrorists is just a silly mistake, and demonising military actors with moral, strategic, political and religious goals is both strategic idiocy and a philosophical (and perhaps moral) failing. Read their articles – these guys have a serious moral mission that we should take seriously.
TerjeP manages to present the classic immoral position of the right – we went in and destroyed a state, supported the creation of chaos in another state, and when the chickens come home to roost it’s “their duty not ours.” Funny how libertarians eschew all moral standards in political discourse until they have an opportunity to talk about other peoples’ duty…
“We” didn’t help create IS any more than “we” will be responsible for further mayhem in Iraq. Suggestions that “we” have the power or obligation to control events in the Middle East for Good are just as misconceived as the hubristic imperialism of the PNAC neo-cons. The intra-Islamic conflicts and killings are the work of Muslims who need neither our permission nor our assistance. “We” are only involved because we have chosen to insert ourselves in a complex situation which we have no hope of even understanding, let alone managing.
What “we” have done, meaning the USA and a movable feast of satellite supporters, has been to act as a change agent: to “unfreeze” the force field, in Kurt Lewin’s terms. The predictable (and widely predicted) result has been regional instability. We can no more reverse the chaos that has been let loose than we can control or even anticipate the direction of future change. The best thing we could do from a moral perspective would be to “cut and run”, as Alexander Downer used to imply was such a caddish option. We will do no such thing of course because American interests are involved. But let’s see the situation for what it is and not keep trotting out fairy tales making out we are still shouldering the white man’s burden, trying to lead the benighted savages into the enlightened condition of Liberty and Democracy.
Well then at what point is it the duty of the Iraqi government to defend Iraqi territory and Iraqi citizens? Next year? Next decade? When? What is the point of having a government at all if it does not provide the most essential of services such as defence?
I didn’t. But yes the allies did and the US setup a new state at great cost. That new state then asked us all to leave. So we left. We should stay out. We should have stayed out in 2003.
@Ken_L
I agree. You gave a very good summary of the phenomenon.
Ken_L, ISIS explicitly state that the conditions for their ascension were set in 2003 by the US invasion of Iraq. We destroyed the state of Iraq, leading to the killing of a million Iraqis and the internal displacement of 2-4 million more. Don’t put that we in quotation marks – we did it. That makes us directly responsible for what happens there, and pretending that it’s all just Islamic infighting is a cheap cop out. As is the pretense that the state we erected to replace Saddam was a real state and not a figleaf over our failure. The same applies to the Syrian uprising: some oily bastard from Europe in a cheap suit rocked up to tell the Syrian rebels we had their backs, and as a result the country became a failed state. As is now also painfully apparent in Libya, another state we helped overthrow. Have you not noticed that major alternative governments pop up in every country where Europe and the US has supported uprisings? And that these people are often Very Very Bad? Have you seen what is happening in Afghanistan this summer, the collapse of the fragile peace in Helmand province and reversal of years of redevelopment and stabilization in that region? These areas all have in common that a relatively stable state was smashed by us and replaced with a corrupt, incompetent, brutal and nasty crony state (or no state at all).
If you want to continue with the “we aren’t responsible” idea, then you should admit you’re happy sharing rhetorical space with Tony Blair. Go for it.
TerjeP, you can’t eschew responsibility for what your govt does because you’re an immoral libertarian or you voted against it. It was the duty of the Iraqi government to defend Iraqi territory and citizens in 2002. We destroyed that state and replaced it with a joke, after years of internal upheaval and destruction. That country is our responsibilty. Not theirs, not the people who voted for war – all of us.
@ Paul Norton,
The exact comment (and I cannot believe someone other than myself and my friend remember this) was “Either disqualify (the bad guy) or call off the match (and award the match to the bad guy). Make a decision. Even if it’s wrong!”
Yeah I can.
But I’m intrigued. Are you responsible for everything our government does? Because if you are then I have a bone to pick.
Faustusnote I already noted that America and its helpers created the instability in the region. However it does not follow – in fact it is a complete fallacy – to argue that having screwed things up so comprehensively, America now has the means to make them all better again. It ought also to be remembered that the Middle East was hardly an oasis of tranquility prior to 2003, or indeed 1903, and it’s quite possible that if “we” had refrained from invading Iraq, events might have turned out equally badly or even worse. My point is that we had and have neither the capability nor the moral obligation to influence events in any particular direction.
I have written and campaigned consistently against the Iraqi invasion since it was first mooted. I’m not going to accept collective responsibility for something I opposed but could not prevent, but load yourself up with guilt if it makes you happy.
@faustusnotes
Get a grip on yourself mate. You need to consider some geostrategic and realpolitik realtities. You say “we” will lose Syria and Iraq to this mob. Who is “we” exactly? Is it our Syria and Iraq? Do we own them? Are these countries ours to dispose of? I think their own people own them and we messed up Iraq so badly it is now not an integral functioning state. This leaves aside the issue that the borders in that area are a colonial hang over anyway.
With respect to militaries and military hardware, ISIS/ISIL is not a serious player. It’s all relative. I was comparing them to a coherent nation state which knows how to field and operate an army in a theatre of war. Compared to even Turkey or Iran, ISIS/ISIL is a big joke.
Global Firepower (GFP) ranks nations on conventional military strength (i.e. without nukes). According to GFP, Turkey is the 8th largest conventional military power in the world.
Turkey – Manpower
Total Population: 80,694,485
Available Manpower: 41,637,773
Fit for Service: 35,005,326
Reaching Military Age Annually: 1,370,407
Active Frontline Personnel: 410,500
Active Reserve Personnel: 185,630
– Land Systems
Tanks: 3,657
Armored Fighting Vehicles (AFVs): 8,532
Self-Propelled Guns (SPGs): 961
Towed-Artillery: 2,152
Multiple-Launch Rocket Systems (MLRSs): 646
Total Aircraft: 989
Fighters/Interceptors: 254
Fixed-Wing Attack Aircraft: 254
Transport Aircraft: 437
Trainer Aircraft: 245
Helicopters: 418
Attack Helicopters: 36
I won’t bother listing their navy.
Iran is listed as the 22nd most powerful military in the world. Vietnam is listed 23rd and look what happened to the last major power that tried to mess with them.
With respect to ISIS/ISIL, in August 2014, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights claimed that the number of fighters in the group had increased to 50,000 in Syria and 30,000 in Iraq, while the CIA estimated in September 2014 that in both countries it had between 20,000 and 31,500 fighters. So estimates of fighters run from about 30,000 to 80,000 total.
“Weaponry that ISIS has reportedly captured and employed include SA-7 and Stingersurface-to-air missiles, M79 Osa, HJ-8] and AT-4 Spigot anti-tank weapons, Type 59 field gunsand M198 howitzers, Humvees, T-54/55, T-72, and M1 Abramsmain battle tanks, M1117 armoured cars, truck mounted DShK guns, ZU-23-2 anti-aircraft guns, BM-21 Grad multiple rocket launchers and at least one Scud missile.”- Wikpedia.
This might sound impressive until you compare it Turkey’s military or even Iraq’s remaining military. We don’t know how much of this equipment they can maintain and run. It takes a lot trained men, equipment, parts , workshops, oil and fuel to maintain and run that stuff.
Vox sums it up in Iraq:
“ISIS cannot challenge the Iraqi government for control over the country. On a basic level, it’s simple math. Estimates of ISIS’ fighting strength range from 10,000 to (at the extreme upper limit) 50,000 combat troops — the CIA estimates the number to be between 20,00 and 31,500. It can also occasionally grab reinforcements from other extremist militias. The Iraqi army has 250,000 troops, plus armed police. The Iraqi military also has tanks, airplanes, and helicopters. ISIS can’t make a serious play for the control of Baghdad, let alone the south of Iraq, without a serious risk of getting crushed. But the Iraqi army is also a total mess, which explains why ISIS has had the success it’s had despite being dramatically outnumbered.”
I doubt that Iran would stand by and let the Shia of south Iraq get slaughtered. If anything, it is the responsibility of Shia Iraqis, the Kurds, Turkey, Iran, Jordan and (ironically) Israel to contain ISIS/ISIL. I’ll leave Syria out of it as it is a total mess. We should never have started the Iraq GW 2 and the more we stay involved the bigger mess we make it. We need to get out and declare it a regional problem for the regional powers to deal with.
Is faustusnotes on the turps? ISIS/ISIL beheads civilian hostages such as journalists, executes and rapes civilians who aren’t Sunni Muslim like the Yazidis and conducts suicide bombings in marketplaces etc. If they aren’t terrorists, no one is.
that’s right Ken, it does not follow that because we broke Iraq we have the capacity to fix it. But it does follow that we have the responsibility. We can choose not to use our capacity to address our responsibility.We may not be able to address our responsibility.
Ikonoklast, Global Firepower ranks Syria 26th in the world. It has more tanks than Turkey and half the aircraft (473); frontline personnel of 170,000. How’s the war against ISIS’s 30,000 frontline personnel going for Syria? Well? You think they maybe aren’t trying? You have any idea why the world’s 26th most powerful army has failed to defeat an insurgent band of 30,000 soldiers who are so confident in their control of their Syrian territory that they have opened 2 more fronts (Iraq and Kurdistan) while also fighting another insurgent band (and winning) inside Syria? And destroying/absorbing other terrorist groups in the process?
You ask “is it our Syria and Iraq”? It is most assuredly our Iraq. We broke it, we re-armed it, we own the government, it is our failings that opened this little backdoor into hell. Until Iraq has a functioning state of its own, yes we own it. It’s just childish and petty for Australia, the UK and the US to walk away from protecting and rebuilding a nation that we destroyed; and more than that, it’s a great shame on us, and a crime, such as we haven’t seen in generations. Truly, this and the previous generation of politicians (and by extension, voters) are a sordid and pathetic lot.
@faustusnotes
So what exactly is the Iraq government responsible for? Anything?
Well for starters TejeP, forming.
Gaius X, I didn’t say that they don’t terrorize people (I pointed out that they declare this openly!), but that doesn’t make them terrorists anymore than WW2 fliers were terrorists for doing terror bombing. Words have meaning, you know. They are soldiers. Also they explicitly reject marketplace suicide bombs, and have had points of doctrinal difference (resolved quite unpleasantly, I think) with terrorist groups that do this. They don’t seem to view what they do to the Yazidis as terror: they seem more inclined to call it genocide.
If you can’t put these organizations in their proper perspective and assess them based on their purpose and principles, you won’t get very far understanding what they’re doing or how to handle them.
Lol. Iraq was already broke. Removing a dictator and trying to help the locals set up a democracy doesn’t make us liable for the misdeeds of the locals. The locals wasted an opportunity that was handed to them on a golden platter and must now live with the consequences. The only thing we are arguably responsible for is allowing Australian citizens to join the bloodbath.
@faustusnotes
If I hung out a shingle to say I was a surgeon, despite having no medical qualifications, and then proceeded to horribly botch an operation on someone, would it be “my responsibility to fix it up” by further surgical intervention? No, I would criminally responsible but it would become perforce someone else’s responsibility to correct my botch-up if possible. Very likely if I had a house and some money, when I went to court I would be ordered to pay for all medical costs, exemplary damages and be sent to jail. That very possibly is what should happen here. G.W. Bush, T. Blair, J. W. Howard and their advisers, cabinets etc. should go to the Hague to be tried. Part of such a case should determine reparations and exemplary damages from our nations and how these are to be applied to the injured nations. That’s if you want justice.
Of course, that will never happen. The next least worst course would be for the West to stop interferring and leave the Middle East to sort itself out. Well targeted non-military aid would help but we should stop all military aid and exports to all M.E. countries including Israel. That will never happen either. So, the fools that run the West will follow (more or less) your policy prescription of more insane intervention. I guess we will see how that turns out.
PrQ
I think it varies. I had a bit of a look through this a while back. The figure you quote was the consensus for the US in Afghanistan but that was only about 2/3 of what the Canadians were spending. The costs for Australia were quite a bit less as I recall … About $600-700,000 per troop.
Of course much depends on the logistical costs. Iraq might be cheaper than Afghanistan. The cost per troop will presumably be higher if there are fewer troops.
My policy prescription is not intervention – I don’t have a policy prescription. But I think if we want to go all isolationist on their arses, we need to recognize that we have created a new and genocidal force in the region, and we need to accept that tens of thousands of people are going to die before it goes under. Not arming the Peshmerga means the slaughter of thousands of kurds; once ISIS reach the Turkish border they’ll turn South. You’re looking at several years of genocidal war due to our misdeeds. Leaving totally and not arming regional actors means that we don’t supply weapons or ammunition to Iraq with a genocidal anti-shi ite force on its doorstep. Are you happy with the consequences of that? If you are unsure about what it means, I suggest you have a look through the ISIS magazine. It is quite … informative … as to their intentions.
An alternative is to go full metal on them, and return to Iraq in force; destroy ISIS thoroughly in Iraq and show the region that we’re serious about setting up a stable society in Iraq. That may not help Syria but it will end the ISIS mystique, and maybe somewhere in that Obama can force a serious statehood onto Iraq.
The worst possible alternative is piecemeal bombing campaigns, limited observers and arming of second-rate forces with low-grade weaponry. ISIS will capture US soldiers, continue to win victories, and be able to claim victory over the crusader west; there will be a brief lull in their victories but Kurdistan will still fall. In the end we’ll be dragged in anyway, after we’ve given ISIS time to grow in Syria. This seems to be Obama’s preferred approach, and Abbott of course is going to go along with it. Better hope that ISIS haven’t captured any sophisticated anti-aircraft systems – we’ve seen what a few drunk Russian hooligans can do with that stuff, what do you think an ISIS team will do to Aussie pilots?
I probably agree with this. Option A which I prefer is stay at home. Not because we can’t help anyone but because it’s not in our national interest to be there. Option B is go in hard. If we are going to fight then make it a serious effort, fight to win and let people know that’s how we roll. If we’re not willing to do Option B then we should look again at option A. Option C is fart arse around the edges. Some people view C as a sensible compromise but it’s probably the worst of options because we continue to ferment the reputation of being weak and as such we simply embolden our enemies.
You could argue that ISIS is a product of past mistakes, both political and by the military, and based on the evidence available that argument would be compelling. If past outcomes are to be ignored (Bush Blair Howard “no regrets”) then the same principle should be applied to planning future actions ie ignore them.
Abbotts obvious enthusiasm for a war based on some evidence should be tempered by all the other evidence. As King Richard the lionhearted found out, we simply have no place in the affairs of the middle east.
@Fran Barlow
Since the question of the cost-effectiveness of killing presumed terrorists was raised, I thought I’d look more closely at Afghanistan. Wikipedia gives 20-25 000 Taliban killed and a cost for the war of nearly $500 billion (that doesn’t appear to include future costs for veterans disability etc). So, the average cost is $20-25 million per Taliban fatality. We would want to allow for other benefits of war expenditure (schools, hospitals etc) but as far as I can tell these have been minimal.
“destroy ISIS thoroughly in Iraq and show the region that we’re serious about setting up a stable society in Iraq.”
“We” can no more set up a stable society in Iraq than fly to Mars. Don’t you understand that America (a) doesn’t know how to, and (b) doesn’t have the necessary capabilities and resources even if it did? “We” are not doctors, as you suggested in an earlier comment, using our superior knowledge and judgement to cure the poor old Iraqi nation. That is exactly the kind of flawed mentality that got us into this mess in the first place. We are clumsy oafs trying to impose our notion of order on a country at arm’s length using hi-tech weaponry, while we studiously ignore the wishes of the hundreds of millions of people directly affected. It’s patronising imperialism of the most atrocious kind.
Oops faustusnote my apologies, I see it was not you who used the doctor analogy. But the substance of my comment stands – thinking we are in any position to “set up a stable society” in Iraq (or indeed any kind of society that we design) is pure fantasy.