Hey, we did it in Iraq. Second time's the charm?
The Iraq situation is much more complicated than just the political side of things.
This is purely anecdotal, but a buddy of mine served in Iraq and one of his jobs involved working as a sniper/doing reconnaissance to provide the local police with intelligence.
Again, this is anecdotal, but I trust his perception of the following:
Iraq is a mess because the people supposed to be keeping the peace (local police/military) and fighting CIA are just about the worst possible for the job.
1. They're frequently lazy/cowardly and will lay down their weapons and run away/hide at the first sight of actual danger. They just want to get paid and go home, not to risk life/limb fighting CIA/other jihadi groups. Of course CIA will then often come by and pick up abandoned weapons and even vehicles.
2. They are often unable to follow simple directions due to issues with comprehension or interpretation. My buddy has a story about how he had to direct the police to enter the third house along a street, and the police were unable to understand his direction and all he could do was watch through his scope as they kicked down the nearest door and ran in. The person of interest they were supposed to arrest ended up getting away by running out a back door upon hearing the commotion. Either they couldn't count to 3, weren't listening carefully, or likely both.
3. Some will use opiates, even while on duty, leading to a general inability to perform the required tasks. Being high as stuff on what is essentially heroin isn't conducive to successful military operations.
Completely disregarding the political side of the Iraq problem (which admittedly is huge) the Iraqi police and army are so ridiculously cowardly and incompetent that they are completely ineffective at deterring jihadis from recruiting, training, and carrying out attacks.
It's about Afghanistan, but
there's a fairly interesting documentary from Vice (blegh) called "This is What Winning Looks Like. It illustrates very similar problems to the situation in Iraq within the Afghan security forces. At one point, the Afghan forces kidnap three men to "get revenge" for a prior kidnapping by terrorists in some sort of poor attempt at a ransom/hostage exchange. They brick the hostages into a sweltering closet-sized room, denying them food and water and any sort of ability to access a bathroom. I'll admit I laughed at the "Rambo" guy carrying the machine gun running into the middle of the field firing blindly at the treeline where the enemy supposedly was, however.
It's just a clown fiesta on so many levels.
Poll