We watched in awe as the "Arab Spring" erupted at the end of 2010. Astonishing bravery by protesters across the Arab world robbed the region's regimes of one of their most powerful weapons: fear.
People were no longer afraid. In Iraq today, we see a reversal of this phenomenon in the ranks of the Iraqi Army - the weapon that the so-called Islamic State uses against them with greatest effect is fear - of its unspeakable brutality.
Just a mention that IS forces might be coming down the highway is enough for the officers and ranks of the Iraqi Army to cut and run, as they did in the Iraqi city of Mosul in June. IS' mass abductions and massacres are a calculated signal to the Iraqi Army of the fate that awaits them should they find the nerve to stand and fight.
That fear and the inability of a corruption-ridden force to keep its troops adequately supplied are not likely to change any time soon.
So what can 3000 American "advisers", much less a few hundred Australians, do to make an Iraqi Army that doesn't want to fight, fight?
In seeming to confirm that Australian Special Forces were finally arriving in Iraq, Prime Minister Tony Abbott said: "[IS] declared war on the world . . . so it's important to respond strongly, which is what the US-led coalition is doing. Our priority at the moment is getting our special forces into Baghdad and then into the field on the advice and assistance mission that we've set them."
Funny that getting the Aussies on the ground was not a priority for the Baghdad government. The deployment has been cooling its heels in the Gulf since September and Julie Bishop's October 18 dash to Baghdad was supposed to have smoothed the way for the arrival of Australian troops – but then we read that Baghdad was dragging its heels in issuing visas for them.
While Washington was spending upwards of $US60 billion a year for the war in Iraq, it also ponied up $US25 billion to re-establish and retrain the Iraqi Army after deciding it would be a great idea to abolish the force after its 2003 invasion of the country. At the height of Australia's Operation Catalyst commitment to security and training in al-Muthanna province, there were 1400 Australian personnel on the ground.
Now we are asked to believe that having failed to make a fighting force with that kind of money and with 10 years to give it a shot, that somehow they will be able to do it, with fewer Australians to help, in less than 10 months and on about one-tenth of the original budget.
Abbott's "it's important to respond strongly" rhetoric raises other questions.
He made several mentions of "the fight being waged by Iraqis" and "no one's going to fight harder for Iraq than Iraqis". His failure to utter the words "Iraqi Army" echoed a line of analysis in Washington these days on why the US is not responding as strongly as it might to the conflict in Syria and Iraq.
The gist of it is this: Washington is not launching air strikes on the regime of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad because he is an ally of the Iranian regime, which could get the Shiite militias it is sponsoring in Iraq as an alternate national security force to turn their fire on the Americans, so wouldn't it make more sense to conclude a nuclear deal with Tehran and then enlist the Iranians as a more useful ally in stabilising a region that is in chaos?
Perhaps it would be instructive for Australians who wonder why they should be fighting this war if their Prime Minister was to address these issues rather than retreating to rhetoric about what we all know – that IS is an abomination.
