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Comment by gaius | Hacker News Reader

They're running their military using the same techniques we do

Well, of course they are. American Green Berets ran an extensive "train the trainer" programme in Afghanistan, bootstrapping the precursors of the Taliban into a military that could take on the Soviets.

Then once the Soviets were gone, the factions turned on each other, which meant, they continued to practice and refine what they have learned. An ISIS equivalent of a Drill Sergeant probably isn't too different from his Western counterpart...

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That's the Taliban in Afghanistan. ISIS grew out of the very different Iraqi context.

The real origin of ISIS's organizational skill is the disbanding of the Iraqi military in 2003 - a totally unnecessary decision on the part of the US that played a big part in the ensuing chaos in the country. Lots of military officers from the old regime, disproportionately Sunni, out of a job, and none too picky about the specific ideologies of the groups that would advance their sectarian interests, transferred their knowledge to groups like AQI, the ancestor of ISIS.

The disbanding of the military was part of the DeBa'athification doctrine. It also banned all members of the Ba'ath party from public employment, including the various affiliated corporations. Private jobs were surprisingly hard to find, given the stigma and the whole war thing.

So not only the military knowledge, but the people that know how to run the factories and the people that can handle the logistics of such a thing. Not to mention teachers, medical staff, and similar posts.

It seems like it was one of the dumbest decisions in history. Had they kept the first admnistrator, Jay Garner, who wanted to have elections in 90 days, you might have had everything Bush stated he wanted - a democratic country in the Middle East. It would probably have fallen into Iranian influence anyway. The decision to go for Paul Bremer who chose to disband the Baath party, all of its members, and delay elections, might eventually be remembered as one of the greatest geopolitical mistakes in history.

They did a ton of other stupid things around the same time. Like changing the flag for example - all that meant that the old flag became a rallying point for the rebels. You would think Americans of all people would realize how potent a symbol a flag is. Then they set up headquarters in Saddam's old palace...

It wasn’t a mistake, but part of the neocon/military industrial complex plan for perpetual war in the Middle East.

This is one of the things that makes me skeptical about trusting smart people. The administration at the time was composed mostly of very intelligent people, and yet they managed to make some of the dumbest decisions in modern history. Being a little too smart often leads to hubris and an unwillingness to consider the possibility that you might be wrong.

> The disbanding of the military was part of the DeBa'athification doctrine.

Which was inspired by the denazification effort in post-WWII Germany. The problem is that the U.S. actually tried to follow through this time (the denazification effort rather notoriously slowed down first as the Allies realised that they needed competent administrators if they didn't want the Germans to starve to death, and then later as the Cold War heated up).

In retrospect the U.S. probably should have deliberately chosen to prosecute only the bigger fish, with a ban from public employment one punishment for the smaller of those. But hindsight is 20/20.

>But hindsight is 20/20.

Then why didn't they clearly see the problems that happened when they tried this is Germany and Japan?

In part, because historians & philosophers have generally castigated the Allies for not being more diligent in their denazification efforts. Morally, of course, they're right: people like Wenher von Braun were very likely guilty of crimes against humanity, and very possibly should have been hanged (he wasn't, of course, and as a result we got to the Moon). In my late-90s education this was all taught as almost unmitigatedly bad thing; the general belief was that we should have done the Right Thing, not the Pragmatic Thing.

Our experience in Iraq indicates that perhaps the Pragmatic Thing can also sometimes be the Right Thing. We might have been able to avoid a lot of injustice with a relatively small amount of injustice.

For this explanation to make sense, you need to consider "mass indiscriminate firing" to be "justice." Those vocal critics of things like Operation Paperclip could have told the Bush administration that was ridiculous in 2003. They were never asked, almost no one was. The occupation strategy was slapped together last minute by people chosen for their political ideology.

In a regime where membership of The Party is mandatory if you want a good job, it's reasonable to assume that many if not most members of The Party were merely ticking a box.

al-Qaida is also present in Syria in the form of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, previously Nusra Front. They have Afghan veterans in their ranks, but do not have the same level of sofistication and standardization as the Islamic State.

It's not obvious exactly why the IS is different, but I doubt it has anything to do with American influence. Other rebel groups in the Syrian civil war has had direct American training but they were highly undisciplined and ineffective.

If anything they were Iraqi army veterans trained by Soviets. But guess complaining about Russian imperialist overreach is unfashionable.

The big difference is that ISIS descends from Al-Qaida's Iraqi franchise, which picked up a lot of professionalism from demobilized Iraqi Army officers. ISIS was expelled/quit AQ when it started moving in from Iraq and muscling in on Nusra's turf, but they do have common origins.

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