If you set aside, for a moment, what is believed in, it obviously helps to believe in something if you plan to "stand up" and fight. At the most basic level in our age, it helps if you feel your country has been violated and occupied by foreigners. In the last two centuries, no emotion has mobilized more people in arms than the one we call "nationalism" when other people take up arms and "patriotism" when we do so. Call it love of country. Add religion to that -- or the belief that your country or region has been taken over by unbelievers -- and you have a powerful combination. The issue here is not years of training, it's motivation. And our Iraqis have next to none -- with the exception of Kurdish and Shiite militiamen who want to take out those Sunnis they think of as their enemies and a potential peril to their existence.
