WI the Iraqi army had been properly disarmed before demobilization?

King Thomas

Banned
I've read that a lot of problems happened in Iraq because the Iraqi Army was demobilzed but the soldiers were allowed to keep their guns. So the result of this was that a large number of the unemployed,armed and not unreasonably bitter ex soldiers started waging gurilia war against the US soldiers. What if some general instead had told the Iraqi soldiers that their weapons were to be standardized and replaced with the type of gun that the US soldiers carry?

In that way it should be possible to trick the majority of them into putting their weapons down, and then telling the now disarmed soldiers that they are now unemployed. Unarmed, they would not be able to strengthen the resistance movement. Would it then be easier to stabilize Iraq and pull out US and British soldiers earlier?
 

MacCaulay

Banned
I've read that a lot of problems happened in Iraq because the Iraqi Army was demobilzed but the soldiers were allowed to keep their guns. So the result of this was that a large number of the unemployed,armed and not unreasonably bitter ex soldiers started waging gurilia war against the US soldiers. What if some general instead had told the Iraqi soldiers that their weapons were to be standardized and replaced with the type of gun that the US soldiers carry?

In that way it should be possible to trick the majority of them into putting their weapons down, and then telling the now disarmed soldiers that they are now unemployed. Unarmed, they would not be able to strengthen the resistance movement. Would it then be easier to stabilize Iraq and pull out US and British soldiers earlier?

In my opinion, they'd still be useful to the resistance. Guns don't kill people. People kill people. And former servicemen were still trained in how to use those weapons. Just because I got home from the service didn't mean I wasn't able to get a gun within a few weeks.
They'd be able to arm themselves, either from the Iranians, Syrians, or Al Qaeda.

They'd still be unemployed, and if Al Qaeda came knocking and told them they'd be providing a paycheck for some work as gunmen, they'd probably say yes. Only now Al Qaeda would be providing the paycheck and the guns. Maybe the resistance would be smaller at first and you'd see the initial attacks against armories, but I don't think it'd be a big difference.


In my mind, the thing to do would've been to not demobilize the Army but to order them back to their bases (like we did) and just pay them to stay there. Keep them fed, keep them clothed, and basically make a downpayment on retraining an army that was already probably willing to serve whoever was going to give them a regular paycheck.
 
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