The Iraqi Army will have to destroy Mosul in order to save it — and it's not clear whether it can do the job even then. It isn't so much an army as a vast system of patronage providing employment of a sort for 900,000 people.
When fewer than a thousand ISIS jihadis fought their way into Mosul, Iraq's second-largest city, over the past few days, most of the government's soldiers just shed their uniforms and fled.
The government troops never felt comfortable in Mosul anyway, for they are mostly Shiite Muslims and the vast majority of Mosul's 1.8 million residents are Sunni. (Or maybe it's only 1.3 million people now, for up to 500,000 of the city's residents are reported to be fleeing the triumphant jihadis.)