Does this really matter as long as we are talking about a large but mostly gendarme style force that will be split up into provincial forces anyway? Simply have the recruits sent to the area they train in and then serve, they would never have to mix much? With so many locals to do patrolling and law and order work the main US fighting force can simply sit in base not taking casualties from low level attacks and still be ready to act as the rapid response force if need?You can't have the Soldiers that went to Camp A trained to US standards while the Soldiers that went to Camp B are trained to British standards while the Soldiers in Camp C are trained to Canadian standards.
But with a very large Iraq/UN/US force would they even have to fight much, if the insurgency doesn't escalate due to being stamped on early and hard would it ever develop to the level of OTL?But you can't expect an entirely green force to stand up to battle. That's been proven time and time again throughout history. Where vastly larger and better equipped forces broke and ran when facing smaller, veteran forces. Morale is a huge force multiplier. You NEED those guys in a division that can say, "been there, done that, lived to talk about it." You have no idea the difference that makes to troops that have never heard a shot fired in anger. And to me, that's why I think they would practically have to be trained to American standards. Because the US, by far, had the most combat units in theater. And that let's you very quickly stand up new Iraqi units as the initial soldiers quickly gain that edge of, "we can do this, we've done it before" that only comes from combat.
Isn't this the opposite of what would be wanted to suppress an insurgency? Ie you would want huge numbers of men to man checkpoints and act as slightly better armed police (and soak up lots of young men out of work), the only professionalism that you really need them to not kill civilians and escalate the tensions (but that could be don by simply mixing Shia and Sunni in each unit?), actually doing the majority of the hard fighting against any insurgents that don't run at first contact can be left to US+ forces now free for day to day work?I'm not saying it would be perfect. But it would have been vastly better than what we had OTL. The thing about resources, though. Not every country needs a military as large as the US. So you can still equip and train a force to American standards while making that force smaller. In the Middle East, you could get away with a much smaller, but PROFESSIONAL army and beat anyone but Israel. And that's only because the IDF is large and professional.
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