Over the Memorial Day weekend, U.S. Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter made the following harsh critique about the loss of Ramadi, a key Iraqi city, to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS): “What apparently happened was that the Iraqi forces just showed no will to fight.”
Ramadi is a city of about 500,000 that is optimally located for trade, commerce and transportation by the Euphrates River. More significantly, upon this strategic focal point lies the blood shed by U.S. soldiers who defended it for the sake of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Robin SmithThe capture of Ramadi, the capital of the Iraqi province of Anbar, continues the disquieting trend of ISIS growing in strength, influence and captured territory. As Secretary Carter further explained in the CNN interview, “[Iraqi forces] were not outnumbered. In fact, they vastly outnumbered the opposing force, and yet they failed to fight, they withdrew from the site, and that says to me, and I think to most of us, that we have an issue with the will of the Iraqis to fight ISIL and defend themselves. … We can give them training, we can give them equipment, we obviously can’t give them the will to fight.”
Last week’s conflict saw 6,000 regular Iraqi army troops fleeing from defensive positions in Ramadi in the face of just 150 ISIS terrorists. You read that correctly: 6,000 fled from 150 Islamic terrorists. According to the Washington Post’s account, the retreating forces included “elite counterterrorism troops from Iraq’s Golden Division.”
This isn’t the first occasion to see the Iraqi army retreat or even the largest. A year ago in June 2014, Iraqi soldiers were said to have “dropped their weapons” as they deserted their posts during the loss of Mosul, a key northern Iraqi city. It was reported that as many as 30,000 Iraqi troops ran from an advancing force of around 800 ISIS militants.