Iraqi is a nonexistent element....there is Shia, Sunni, or Kurd...but no so-called Iraqi as in a actual citizen that believes in a single nation...
With that said, Arabs are worthless when it comes to combat and soldiering...they are the most incompetent and lazy culture I’ve ever come across...and any vet from OIF or OEF that was in a training role will agree with me 100%...
So - yes - if we are on the ground - we are going to have to fight...because those idiots won’t risk it...because as they say over there, “It’s not my problem.”
‘Iraqi’ Arabs fight mostly for MONEY first and foremost. Kurds mostly do Not. That’s PARTLY why we lost many American trained Iraqi Arabs months ago. A country called ‘Iraq’ never was - simply look at history of how ‘Iraq’ as we know it came to be.
Look up the famous 1999 paper, ‘Why Arabs Lose Wars’. It’s a bit dated now (it assumes fighting a Saddam or Qadhaffi style dictatorship, not an Islamic one) but is still the best hard-headed analysis on the subject from a US military viewpoint.
And yet they killed more GI's in a shorter period of time than the much-vaunted, mainly Pashtun Taliban. It's a real head-scratcher.