Here's an amazing fact most of the Chicken Little rhetoric about the crisis in Iraq fails to take into account: The city of Mosul, population 1.5 million, fell to ISIL insurgents because two divisions of Iraq's army (30,000 soldiers) shed their uniforms, abandoned their weapons, and fled from 800 Sunni religious extremists in pickup trucks.
You read that right. Eight hundred holy warriors routed 30,000 Iraqi soldiers. Large parts of Iraq's army clearly have no trust in their officers or loyalty to the Maliki government, which is seen by most people as sectarian organized crime.
In short, it's a political and religious breakdown more than a military failure.
Polls show 16 percent of Americans would support sending troops back into Iraq, while 74 percent are opposed. As reliable a conservative as Thomas Sowell writes that he's had it with "glib and heady talk of 'national greatness' interventionists who were prepared to put other people's lives on the line from the safety of their editorial offices."
The Washington Post's George Will thinks GOP presidential aspirants should be asked whether "given the absence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, and given that we now know how little we know about nation-building and about the promotion of democracy ... if you could rewind history to March 2003, would you favor invading Iraq?"
Welcome back to the real world, fellows. There never was anything remotely conservative about Wolfowitz and company's "Project for a New American Century" to begin with, which this column long ago described as "a grandiose scheme for world domination."
Anyway, here's the second big thing the Chicken Little rhetoric gets wrong: A sectarian civil war between Sunni jihadists and Shiite militias in Iraq may be an appalling human tragedy, but it's not necessarily a grave threat to U.S. security. As Steven Simon of the Middle East Institute explains in the New York Times, a few thousand lightly armed Sunni militants are highly unlikely to overrun Baghdad -- a largely Shiite city of 7 million. And even if they did, they'd end up wishing they hadn't.
The more brutally Sunni militants act in the conquered provinces, the fiercer the resistance they'll encounter -- almost regardless of the Maliki regime. Lest we forget -- and most Americans never knew -- Iraq and Iran fought a terrible bloody war between 1980 and 1988, leaving more than a million dead but nothing changed. Back then, the neocons all supported Saddam Hussein.
For President Obama, the important thing is to resist being stampeded into doing something stupid, and to make damn sure the American people know why.
Arkansas Times columnist Gene Lyons can be reached at eugenelyons2@yahoo.com.