This mission is to train and equip 12 Iraqi Army "counterattack" brigades so that the fight can be taken to Isis. In other words, the Iraqis that our media saw represent the absolute cream of the Iraqi Army's latest reincarnation. They represent Iraq's best of the best.
Except they're not. As the Pentagon's inspector-general noted: "Some popular mobilisation forces [militias] are reportedly better equipped than the IA [Iraqi Army], which likely has a detrimental effect on recruitment and retention in the IA". That has got to be the understatement of 2015.
Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Major-General Robert Scales, a former commandant of the United States Army War College, said: "History has been harsh to those who try to build alien armies in their own image. All the American firepower and 'boots on the ground' will be for naught unless we allow the Iraqis to fight their war, their way."
That has me in full agreement, because after the disastrous war with Iran, followed up by the Gulf wars, Saddam Hussein never learned his lesson that Middle Eastern conventional armies are useless at attrition warfare. The failure of Syria's Bashar al-Assad in that respect, which has brought Russian air and sea power into the region, only goes to highlight this further.
The Pentagon report further lashes the Iraqi government for incomplete equipment and an unhelpful Iraqi Army attitude. It also states that there is a successor mission, which Mr Key has adamantly said no to. Almost as adamantly as he said Red Peak wouldn't be added to the flag referendum.
But then the Pentagon turns to recruit accommodation. One Iraqi commander said this is probably the main reason soldiers go Awol. At Taji, Iraqi officers will not turn on power or water for recruits supposedly because of "funding" issues. General David Petraeus' former executive officer, Colonel Peter Mansoor, sums up the will to fight since Ramadi fell: "I don't think there is any [Iraqi army] stomach to retake Ramadi right now and suffer the kind of casualties that ... would incur".
While large parts of the vast Iraqi Army are a cowardly shambles, the militias represent the polar opposite and this is where General Scales would start. One follows the western military model, the other is "organised around familiar groups that share more than the same national flag". The former does not work with the Middle Eastern counter insurgency, the latter most certainly does.
As proof, General Scales highlights the famed Lawrence of Arabia. Lawrence didn't try to turn Bedouins into shouty sergeant-majors, but instead worked with Bedouin culture: "clustering close-combat formations around familiar and trusted leaders, taking cultures, clans, tribes and ethnicities into account".
Such an approach may go against the grain of western multiculturalism, but the reality is this, Middle Eastern societies are monocultural. So for an Iraqi offensive against Isis to succeed, General Scales says it must be swift, cohesive, methodical and accompanied by overwhelming air power.
It is less about retaking territory and mostly about sapping the will of Isis fighters by pummelling them into the sand again and again. Then, and only then, will Iraq the state stand any chance of exerting itself.
So are we training these "close-combat formations around familiar and trusted leaders, taking cultures, clans and ethnicities into account?" New Zealand First asked Gerry Brownlee that question in July after the first "graduation" at Taji. His reply sums up all we are doing wrong in Iraq: "It is not a requirement for the Iraqi Armed Forces to advise the religious or ethnic breakdown of troops."
This is why the current western approach to the Middle East is a strategy for defeat.
Ron Mark, defence spokesman for New Zealand First, is a former Army officer who has served in Israel, Egypt and the Gulf of Oman.
