Headlines on Sunday screamed “Bomber Kills More Than 100 In Iraq” (AP) and “Bombings Leave 162 Dead In Iraq” (CNN), reminicent of the ongoing media coverage that continues to focus on the successes of the insurgent jihadists and Iranian proxies, rather than on the persistent, if often uneven and painfully slow, progress being made by Coalition forces and the new Iraqi government.
http://news.aol.com/story/_a/bomber-kills-more-than-100-in-iraq/20070707132809990001
Buried in the story however are these interesting bits of information:
The attack’s location, a small Shiite and Kurdish town north of Baghdad, suggests to analysts and officials that the attack may have been “carried out by Sunni extremists fleeing the three-week old US offensive [currently] centered at the city of Baqouba, 60 miles to the south [of Baghdad],” according to the article.
Counter-insurgency strategy, proven successful in the past, involves disrupting insurgent networks and safe-haven bases of operation, by killing or driving out the insurgents, and then holding those cleared areas so that insurgents cannot return, giving the Iraqi government and security forces time to consolidate power and establish the reforms and institutions necessary to support and defend itself.
This has been the military surge strategy outlined by General Petraeus, and indications are that it is working largely as intended.
According to the article, Armili, the target of the most recent attack, is a town of 26,000 poeple 100 miles north of Baghdad. Characterized as “mostly Shiites from Iraq’s Turkoman ethnic minority”, the article further reports residents as saying that “tensions are constantly high with Sunni Arabs who dominate the surrounding villages”.
It has become a clear tactic of al-Qaeda, as well as other Iranian-backed extremists, to launch such attacks (such as the repeated bombings of the Shiite’s Golden Mosque in Sammara) in an effort to stir up inter-sectarian violence between Sunni and Shiite populations.
A recent report quoted one Iraqi official as indicating that perhaps as much as 70% of the ongoing violence can be traced to encouragement, training, funding, and weaponry being provided by the Iranian theocratic regime, which many have recently begun to characterize as being engaged in a “proxy” war in Iraq, as well as in Lebanon.
Also buried in the story was an acknowledgement that, in spite of ongoing incidents, overall “attacks have fallen in recent weeks in much of Baghdad”, corresponding to the increased US and Iraqi troop presence and the aggressive action being taken against insurgent and extremist networks there.
In addition, the article acknowledges that “Dozens of Sunni Muslim sheiks and tribal leaders met Saturday [the day of the bombing] in the western city of Ramadi, pledging to fight terrorism and restore peace to Anbar province – for years the heart of the insurgency.”
The article also reports that “among them were members of the Anbar Awakening, which was formed in April [2007] by more than 200 Sunni sheiks whose followers are now COOPERATING [emphasis added] with US forces against al-Qaida and other insurgents.”
That sounds pretty positive to me. Sure there’s crime in America. Police push it out of one neighborhood, and it moves to another. Neighbors band together to work with police to form neighborhood watch initiatives that reduce the opportunities that those of a criminal bent will have to practice their trade. Just because you won’t “win” against the gang-bangers overnight, doesn’t mean that you give up and let them have the streets.
We’ve all heard the recent reports quoting generals and officers who report that the Iraqi military and police are “not yet ready” to take over and stand on their own against the terrorists and insurgents – and that it might be quite some time before they are.
The operative term there is “yet”. Previous posts here and reports elsewhere have made the point of the continued advances that are being made in the capability and competence of the Iraqi security forces.
Even under the best of conditions and with positive cultural traditions firmly in place, it takes substantial time to adequately train a professional soldier today. It takes even longer to train the NCO’s and officers who will lead them – a task made much harder by the constant need to weed out those with questionable loyalties, and those who are unable to rise above past cultural norms of corruption in office.
Yet it’s happening.
Every war and struggle of consequence involves ups and downs – good days and bad days. Some days you get the bear, some days the bear gets his licks in. Faced with a rabid bear bent on doing you in, though, you don’t give up the hunt.
We should perhaps be reminded that in the opening days of WWII, there was a very vocal faction who considered the conflict to be “Mr Roosevelt’s trumped-up war”, much as there are those who today maintain that the “war on terrorism” is nothing more than a bumper-sticker, a catch-phrase for mere political gain.
There are a large number of people today wishing that the whole unpleasantness would somehow just “go away”.
What we need, they say, is a “change of strategy” – even though the only “strategy” proposed that is not already being pursued on some level or another is a total, unilateral surrender and immediate withdrawal from Iraq, if only so that we can engage in the more politically-correct invasion of Darfur and the Sudan with unarmed and emasculated sitting ducks (oops, I mean “peacekeepers”).
What seems clear is that to those not simply going along blindly with shrill calls for “change” (meaning “any way but their way”), the only “victory” that matters for the party of despair and defeat is the partisan victory of political control in ‘08, and not the achievement of victory and strategic success over those declared and demonstrated enemies of the United States and its allies.
Resoluteness, and the strength of will to stand with and by your friends and allies, means something in the world – and it means everything in a culture where strength is respected, and weakness is abhorred, as is the case in the culture of the Arab world.
If you doubt the veracity of this, consider the prevalent American regard (or lack of regard) for the French – once considered a worthy ally, and now viewed with a certain degree of contempt and suspicion as a result of their more recent tendency to retreat, surrender, and capitulate – and to be generally unreliable in a fight.
Compare this to the relative tenacity of the British and Australians, who,in spite of their popular and political shortcomings, have so far been generally loyal and steadfast allies and active participants in the struggle to combat Islamofascist jihadism.
Which one you would rather have watching your back, the French or the Brits, probably says a lot about you.
Tony Blankley writes in a recent post that he “continues to believe that defeat in Iraq will have shocking consequences”.
Even most war critics believe and acknowledge the truth of that, he writes, they just don’t want to think about it.
In spite of the progess, the popular political wisdom being promulgated (and increasingly accepted) among the talking heads in Washington is that the efforts underway in Iraq are a political liability, and therefore a way needs to be found, as Blankley himself puts it “to weasel out of Iraq.”
“That is fine,” Blankely continues, “if losing in Iraq doesn’t matter much. But if losing in Iraq does matter a lot [as even a large number of critics seem to acknowledge that it will] then it is madness to use a diagnosis of our current shorcomings as a death sentence, rather than as a guide to better treatment methods.”
Another poster on this forum made the point that Iraq “isn’t a game”.
He’s quite correct. It’s not a game – it’s deadly serious stuff.
And yet there are those, predominantly on the political left, but including some with questionable internal fortitude on the right, whose only interest seems to be in playing the political “game”.
Beyond providing immediate public aid, comfort, encouragement, and support to those seeking the subjugation of this country, it’s people, and our allies – both old and new – and thus prolonging the conflict, those jumping on the bandwagon with the apparently popular view may indeed prevail in the heated short-sightedness of electoral expediency.
No, the sky won’t fall and the roof won’t cave in – at least for most – but it is unlikely to be pretty. But then we’ll just have to cross that bridge when we get to it.
In the meantime, readers might continue to question why some are so eager for us to “lose”, declare defeat, and fail in Iraq, especially when we’re not doing either.
Better in Iraq – maybe not so good in Washington.
