PREVIEW FOR AFGHANISTAN

The Sunni Islamists we fought against for eight years are taking back much of Iraq now that our troops have been pulled out

Knowing that our troops would eventually leave Iraq, we trained and equipped the Iraqi army to take over the security of the country after we pulled out in 2011. Our military leaders assured us the Iraqis were ready to defend their country, but the 1 million man army that we trained is now disintegrating.

The Sunni Islamists we fought have now retaken much of the country. They have no tanks or armored vehicles, relying instead on small Toyota, Nissan and Mazda pickup trucks with large caliber machine guns mounted in the truck beds. They have captured Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, and are now within 60 miles of Baghdad.

The Iraqi soldiers defending Mosul, shed their uniforms on the ground, abandoned their weapons and Humvees, and disappeared to who-knows-where in their skivvies as soon as the Islamists opened fire. The Sunni militants then staged a parade of captured U.S. Humvees in Mosul, with two helicopters they seized flying overhead. They also ‘withdrew’ $450 million from the Central Bank, making them the richest of all militant groups.

Eight years of war in Iraq, over 4,000 American lives lost and more than $700 billion spent appear to have been all for naught. And on top of the billions we spent fighting that war, we blew another $25 billion building an army that evaporates in the face of its enemy.

Obama has declared that all American combat troops will be pulled out of Afghanistan in 2016. You can bet that the debacle in Iraq is a preview of what will befall the Afghans once we are gone. The Taliban will retake the country as American trained Afghan troops flee in their skivvies. And the years we spent fighting in Afghanistan, the lives we lost there, and the billions we spent will have been all for naught.