Are Iraqi security forces ready to take over?

[Ritterin Sophia]

The relationship had improved from its lowest ebb but 'water under the bridge' seems like a bit of an overstatement.

You don't go handing vast amounts of intel and hold candlelight vigils for a mere 2k citizens of a place you hate.

[Medic]

Is not another problem that Iraq is alot like the original United States in that not a whole lot of people where really, truly have any dedication to the whole nation but rather the small subunit they are apart of? I've heard that one issue is that Iraqis are perfectly willing to fight and die for their neighborhood or town, but really don't consider it worth fighting and dying for some other part of Iraq (particularly if they had a really poor opinion of that part of Iraq and the people who lived there to begin with). They reason "Why should we sacrifice ourselves for folks who aren't our people, plus may be apostate Shi'ite/Sunni/Kurdish scum who've we've hated forever anyway?"

That strikes me as a big problem. It seems the whole concept of Iraq is just continuing the mistake the British originally made their by stuffing a whole bunch of people with centuries of bad blood together, calling it a nation, and expecting them to get along. Iraqis may just not see themselves or others as Iraqis and all on the same team.

There's that, too. Going back in time, it would've been nice enough to the constituents to carve out nations along ethnic boundary lines -- so you'd see a modern day Kurdistan with chunks taken out of modern-day Iraq, Turkey, Syria and Iran -- but still distribution of wealth and access to ports would be issues. And they'd all still hate Israel's guts.

As-is, the entire Kurdish region of Iraq is basically semi-autonomous... a fairly lamentable but perhaps unavoidable state of affairs for a budding nation coming out of decades of totalitarian rule, then a decade of crushing sanctions and then finally a half-decade of low-level civil war.