We're Training Them

The fact that insurgents are becoming so adept at shooting American helicopters out of the sky is a big problem, bigger than it's being made in the press. Ezra Klein:

We've spent the last few years training an unknown number of eager jihadists on the ins-and-outs of terrorism and urban warfare. We should've known better. It's commonly understood that the modern jihadist movement -- al-Qaeda included -- sprung out of the Afghanistan War, where thousands of radicals spent years learning how to fight and damage an army far stronger and far better equipped than themselves. In Irag, the insurgents have learned the same thing.

We're never going to kill every insurgent, and after we leave, the innocents we've shot and children we've maimed and humiliations we've meted out will ensure a long and enduring legacy of hatred. The chaos of Iraq's broken society will, of course, offer few good options to males between the ages of 16 and 24, so hungry terrorist groups should find it a fertile recruiting ground. And, unlike in the past, these recruits will have already spent years training against the finest army in the world. That, day, by day, they're becoming more effective, more able to shoot down copters and detonate tanks and snipe patrols, is a terrifying glimpse of what the world has to look forward to.

In fact, this turns that whole "flypaper strategy" nonsense on its head. Maybe WE'RE the ones caught in the flypaper, trapped in Iraq to try and stabilize the country while acting as targets for an increasingly lethal band of insurgents. The problem is the staying, therefore, because with each passing day we continue to make things worse for ourselves down the line. It's not only that we could save a half a trillion dollars be leaving, money that could be put into homeland defense and an energy independence plan to take us out of the region geopolitically, and health care for veterans (which is a national disgrace) and education and so on. It's that we're training and, indirectly, arming a group of fundamentalists that are going to be with us for a long time.

Like many of his colleagues, Abu Zaid was issued an Austrian-made Glock pistol when he joined the new U.S.-trained and equipped Iraqi police force.

But after narrowly escaping death twice, including being shot at near a polling station in Baghdad during national elections in December 2005, he decided to quit, he said.

"I sold my Glock pistol and my bullet-proof vest for $1,500 (763 pounds) so that I can feed my family until I find a safer job. They were mine to sell, after all I had risked my life and faced death," he told Reuters.

Anecdotal evidence, including interviews with arms dealers, suggests that Abu Zaid is just one of many policemen selling the highly prized pistol on the black market, already a shopper's delight for buyers with enough cash.

Everything from the ubiquitous AK-47 assault rifle, the biggest-selling item, to rocket-propelled grenade launchers, sniper rifles and belt-fed medium machine guns are available, many looted from huge arms dumps immediately after the 2003 war.

So, we're training insurgents in guerrilla warfare tactics and how to compete against the best Army in the world. We're equipping a disinterested Iraqi Army with guns that then get sold on the black market and can be eventually used against us. And we learned last week that, when we do face and kill Sunni insurgents, we're just doing the Mahdi Army's dirty work for them. Kevin Drum gets this right:

Every day that we remain in Iraq we are almost certainly making things worse, both politically and militarily. The political situation will continue to deteriorate because any kind of compromise is fatally associated with doing the Americans' bidding. The military situation will continue to deteriorate as the insurgents take advantage of the war to become better trained and more lethal. (Remember the mujahedin in Afghanistan?) [...]

Iraq is not likely to have a happy ending no matter what we do, and that's hard to accept. But there's a huge downside to staying, namely that the ending is likely to be a lot less happy the longer we're there. It's time to stop digging ourselves into an ever deeper hole.

But we'll dig that hole, because we have a President that can't recognize failure and can't admit to himself when he's wrong.