Debacle at Wabashra

Computer is back online, fully effective. Dig it.

You may have read recently that the Iraqi Army is a bunch of quitters. This is probably largely true. A young, notionally legitimate and sovereign government goes to enforce its will upon local ruffians. It turns out, though, that those ruffians are tougher than they looked on paper, and know the lay of the land rather well. In fact, the snot-nosed babes wearing the government uniforms are in way over their heads. Horrendous casualties and a complete collapse by the government forces ensue, followed by finger pointing and political wrangling.
What isn't so obvious is that from the third sentence on, my description more closely resembles the fledgling military operation of THE world's fledgling democracy. That's right, the United States of America. Our first large-scale military operation as a sovereign nation was a bajillion times worse than our Iraqi puppets.
After we sent those warm beer and tea drinking Redcoats back from whence they came, we had a slight problem with our neighbors staying on our side of the fence. Apparently, the Indians living in Ohio (not to be mistaken with the Cleveland Indians), didn't think the British had the right to give the upstart Americans ALL the land east of the Mississippi river, on the ridiculous premise that they already lived there. The USA decided to settle the issue by force, and marched 1000 men right into Indianville. Unfortunately, the soldiers were far from their logistics base, poorly trained, and despite being led by a commander with good credentials, doomed to die. And die they did. In American history, there is Pearl Harbor, there is Little Bighorn, and then there is the Battle of the Wabash, standing far out on its own as the worst disaster in American military history. I cannot recall a loss of such strategic magnitude in our history, even the loss of the Philippines was not so devastating. One quarter of our active army was dead! We learned our lesson and ultimately prevailed in the war, but it was a lesson dearly paid for.
So Basra was not so bad for the Iraqis. What made the difference? My suspicion is that the patronage of the world's oldest democracy playing mother hen with intelligence, logistics, training, and fire support. In other words, we passed along the lessons we bought with blood.