Victory and Opportunity in Iraq

The MSM is studiously refusing to cover the emerging American victory over al Qaeda and the Iraqi insurgents.

Fortunately the Times of London is on the job. It reports:

There has been striking success in the past few months in the attempt to improve security, defeat al-Qaeda sympathisers and create the political conditions in which a settlement between the Shia and the Sunni communities can be reached. This has not been an accident but the consequence of a strategy overseen by General David Petraeus in the past several months. While summarised by the single word “surge” his efforts have not just been about putting more troops on the ground but also employing them in a more sophisticated manner. This drive has effectively broken whatever alliances might have been struck in the past by terrorist factions and aggrieved Sunnis. Cities such as Fallujah, once notorious centres of slaughter, have been transformed in a remarkable time.

Indeed, on every relevant measure, the shape of the Petraeus curve is profoundly encouraging.[emphasis mine]

But how has this wonderful news been received in the US?

The current achievements, and they are achievements, are being treated as almost an embarrassment in certain quarters. The entire context of the contest for the Democratic nomination for president has been based on the conclusion that Iraq is an absolute disaster and the first task of the next president is to extricate the United States at maximum speed.

...

Politicians on both sides of the Atlantic have to appreciate that Iraq is no longer, as they thought, an exercise in damage limitation but one of making the most of an opportunity. The instinct of too many people is that if Iraq is going badly we should get out because it is going badly and if it is getting better we should get out because it is getting better. This is a catastrophic miscalculation. Iraq is getting better. That is good, not bad, news.

Read the whole thing here.

This morning on MSNBC the Democrats were trying out their new talking points. They are grudgingly admitting that there has been improvement in Iraq, but argue that the effort has been too costly and opine that the gains have not been due to anything the Bush administration has done. As the gang on "Morning Joe" put it, "Bush isn't winning this war; al Qaeda is losing it." Isn't that the same line of argument they used when the Soviet empire collapsed? Democrats gave all the credit to Gorby, not the Gipper. They are already treating Iraq as old news, and shifting their attention to Iran. What I fear is that Democrats are so invested in the idea that Iraq was a catastrophe that the next administration will withdraw from the area and squander the magnificent opportunity to advance human freedom the current administration and our heroes in uniform have won.

Don Surber observes: Victory in Iraq is a very big problem for the party of defeat. The cheese-eating surrender monkey has replaced the jackass as the [Democrat] party’s symbol.

UPDATE:

Victor Davis Hanson predicts that as the perception of victory in Iraq sinks in there will be a radical revision in American politics:

[T]here will be fundamental political adjustments from the trivial of pundits repositioning themselves by simple silence about the war, or suggestions they were never really anti-war, or that the improvements came only because of their principled criticism — to the fundamental of having the entire leadership of the Democratic either ignore Iraq, claim the victory was not worth the commensurate cost of the last four plus years, or take proprietorship over Gen. Petraeus's success — anything other than demanding a timetable for complete withdrawal with an admission of de facto defeat in the manner of the now infamous NY Times editorial.

Read it here.

Of course it's too soon to tell, but the reversal of fortunes, as Hanson notes, Petraeus' success is as dramatic as that engineered by Grant in the Civil War and Ridgeway in Korea. Both earlier examples led to extreme shifts in public opinion, and so may this one. We can hope.

More Yon

Michael Yon is hunting al Qaeda. Check it out here -- some of the best battlefield reporting you will ever encounter.

Yon on Political Progress

Michael Yon comments on the current Democrat charge that, while military gains might be taking place in Iraq, there has been little or no political progress.

Here's the key graf:

There may be little progress on political goals crafted in America, to meet American concerns, by politicians who have a cushion of 200 years of democracy. Washington might as well be on the moon. Iraqis don’t respond well to rules imposed from outside their acknowledged authorities, though I have many times seen Iraqi Police and Army of all ranks responding very well to American Marines and soldiers who they have come to respect, and in many cases actually admire and try to emulate. Our military has increasing moral authority in Iraq, but the same cannot be said for our government at home. In fact, it’s in moral deficit because many Iraqis are increasingly frightened we will abandon them to genocide. The Iraqis I speak with couldn’t care less what is said from Washington but large numbers of them pay close attention to what some Marine Gunny says, or what American battalion commanders all over Iraq say. Some of our commanders could probably run for local offices in Iraq, and win. To say there has been no political progress in Iraq in 2007 is patently absurd, completely wrong and dangerously dismissive of the significant changes and improvements happening all across Iraq. Whether or not Americans are seeing it on the nightly news or reading it in their local papers, Iraqis are actively writing their children’s history.

Read the whole thing here.

It's not just in Iraq that the Beltway crows seems to be a bunch of clowns -- a lot of people here in America are coming to the same conclusion.

Al Qaeda and Iraq

Wretchard over at the Belmont Club lays out an interesting explanation of why defeating al-Qaeda is the key to stabilizing Iraq and why success in Iraq will be an important, perhaps even the crucial, blow dealt against international terrorism.

On the Iraq "insurgency" he writes:

[A]l-Qaeda chose to make Iraq its decisive arena of confrontation with the United States. The US came to Iraq primarily to topple Saddam Hussein and remove one "state sponsor of terrorism" but it was Al-Qaeda that rushed in to stake its reputation there. A networked insurgency with followers in many Muslim countries could have chosen to attack America elsewhere. But instead it decided to focus its efforts on driving the US from Iraq. For that purpose its leadership established al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) and funneled recruits into it from all over the world. This force was tasked with the explicit political goal of creating a Islamic Caliphate that would provide a prototype for a future Islamic state after the hated Americans had been driven out. Therefore much of the post-Saddam violence was probably the consequence of al-Qaeda's decision to flood all the resources of world terrorism into Iraq. Clearly Zarqawi's clear intention from the Samarra mosque bombing onward was to incite as much violence as he could. Given that al-Qaeda made Iraq the center of its global efforts, O’Hanlon and Pollack's admiration of MNF-I's decision to focus against it seems perplexing. Surely Petraeus had no alternative? Surely he was simply picking up the gauntlet? But that would not quite be true. Through much of 2005 and 2006 a variety of lines were suggested. Some argued that the US should lash out against Syria or Iran for allowing "militants" to transit their borders. Some believed Shi'a militias should be the primary target operations. Until recently many argued -- and still argue -- that al-Qaeda didn't exist in Iraq at all; so how could MNF-I focus against what was not there? So while taking on al-Qaeda now seems the obvious choice, in retrospect there were many other candidates vying for the title of Center of Gravity. Those bad guys still remain, but MNF-I saw al-Qaeda in Iraq as the key to the position and that choice, according to O’Hanlon and Pollack, appears to be the right one.

And the consequences of taking on al-Qaeda directly in Iraq?

[B]y attacking al-Qaeda, the US took engaged not only the most fanatical force in Iraq but the one with the most powerful narrative. And by shrewdly matching kinetic warfare with political warfare, organizing the victims of al-Qaeda's depredations, it brought the myth down to earth. As long as al-Qaeda remained an "idea" it might be regarded as invincible, a mystical will o' the wisp. But once this mystical force was forced to materialize in Iraq, it became embodied in the likes of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his henchmen, who, viewed up close, turned out to be nothing more than brutal gangsters of the lowest and most sadistic type instead of latter day Companions of the Prophet. Even Zawahiri, despite his pretensions to refinement, could not avoid discrediting himself as he proved unable to resist threatening to gouge people's eyes out if they did not follow his bidding. It is said that no man is a hero to his own valet. Familiarity with the genuine article brought disillusionment, contempt and finally hatred for al-Qaeda.

And without the romantic mantle of apocalyptic Islamism to puff them up, both Syria and Iran would shrink to the third-rate powers that they truly are. In choosing al-Qaeda as its focus, MNF-I indirectly weakened both Teheran and Damascus in ways that both were powerless to counter. None of this has been completely achieved yet. But as O’Hanlon and Pollack state, Iraq while not yet won is getting better. And if the process continues much will be accomplished if al-Qaeda can be defeated in Iraq; their image tarnished beyond repair and their narrative shown to be a pack of lies.

Read the whole thing here.

Al-Qaeda's reputation peaked just after 9/11 when it could credibly advertise itself as the "strong horse" that would drive the U. S. and other Western powers out of the Muslim world, but engagement with a determined U. S. presence in Iraq has proved disastrous to that vision. Both the Islamist vision of a restored Caliphate and the "realist" determination to support corrupt despots in the interest of promoting "stability" have taken severe hits, and continued success in Iraq might revive the original intention of providing an alternative to both.

Stay tuned..., this is getting really interesting.

A Light Dawns

Just a few months ago something like this appearing in the New York Times would be unimaginable.

By Michael E. O'Hanlon and Kenneth M. Pollack,

VIEWED from Iraq, where we just spent eight days meeting with American and Iraqi military and civilian personnel, the political debate in Washington is surreal. The Bush administration has over four years lost essentially all credibility. Yet now the administration’s critics, in part as a result, seem unaware of the significant changes taking place.

Here is the most important thing Americans need to understand: We are finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least in military terms. As two analysts who have harshly criticized the Bush administration’s miserable handling of Iraq, we were surprised by the gains we saw and the potential to produce not necessarily “victory” but a sustainable stability that both we and the Iraqis could live with.

Read the whole thing here.

Note that the authors make no mention of the role played by the NYT in undermining the credibility of the administration.

The authors, both with significant "street cred" among the Bush haters, note important successes being racked up by U. S. forces in a number of areas and urge that Congress get behind the program, at least through next year.

This doesn't sound like much -- conditional approval of the current policy being pursued in Iraq and an urging that Congress give limited support to the war effort, at least for a while -- but for the New York Times and other Bush haters, this is a major concession. Liberal Democrats (with the possible exception of "Hillary!") have bet the farm on failure in Iraq. The NYT piece can be seen as a warning that they might have made a big mistake in doing so [as well as being a tacit endorsement of the stand taken by "Hillary!" regarding the war].

At long last the successes of the "surge" are beginning to be felt here in America. The debate is beginning to shift, and the Democrat Left is in danger of being left high and dry.

"Tonight Iraq Knows Only Joy"

Good news from Iraq:

JAKARTA (Reuters) - Iraq completed one of sport's great fairytales by beating Saudi Arabia 1-0 in the Asian Cup final on Sunday to provide a rare moment for celebration in their war-torn homeland.

The Saudis had been bidding to become the first four-times winners of the tournament but Iraq, riding a wave of global sentiment, upset the hot-favourites for a rare slice of sporting glory.

"This is not just about football... this is more important than that," Iraq's Brazilian coach Jorvan Vieira told a news conference.

"This has brought great happiness to a whole country. This is not about a team, this is about human beings."

Read it here.

Serious historians of sport [not those glorified fanboys who write bestselling sports books] have long noted the integrative function played by national sports leagues. In the United States, for instance, it was the period between the Civil War and WWI, when the nation was trying to forge a common identity, that saw the rise of national sports leagues. These allowed for expressions of local and regional pride under the auspices of a national governing body and got people into the habit of thinking of themselves as participants in an "imagined" national community.

In recent decades there has been a determined effort to use soccer in a similar manner to support the concept of a trans-national global community. National soccer teams can forge a sense of national unity while at the same time locating that national sentiment firmly within the context of a consensual transnational framework. Thus the Iraqi victory over the Saudis can serve both to promote Iraqi solidarity across ethnic and religious barriers, and at the same time promote a consciousness that is focused, as the Iraqi coach said, on "human beings" as a general cosmopolitan category, not on Iraqis or Saudis, or Sunni or Shiite, or any other parochial identity.

Omar, at Iraq the Model, writes:

Today is definitely the happiest day for Iraqis in years. Tears of joy mixed with prayers for hope on the faces of millions of Iraqis…Words truly fail me and I can't describe the feeling so please pardon me if the post doesn't sound coherent; I hear the cheering and music outside although the bullets of celebration keep falling on the ground and roofs here and there. But no one seems to worry about that, the moment is so great that fear has no place in the hearts of the millions of fans, neither from bullets nor from crazy suicide bombers who tried to kill our joy last week.

Our players, tonight our heroes, learned that only with team work they had a chance to win.
May our politicians learn from the players and from the fans who are painting a glorious image of unity and national pride, and let the terrorists know that nothing can kill the spirit of the sons of the immortal Tigris and Euphrates.

The fear is gone, the curfew is ignored, tonight Iraq knows only joy...

Read it here.

Given the current situation in the Middle East, this can only be seen as a wholly positive development. We should cheer the Iraqi victory and the cosmopolitan sentiment it engenders, but there is a downside to the general application of these principles.

As Omar notes, Americans don't care all that much about soccer. And that, too, is appropriate. Participation in the "community of man" erodes nationalistic loyalties and there is a large amount of evidence to suggest that, should the United States allow itself to be drawn into the cosmopolitan community envisioned by liberal transnationalists, the world as a whole and Americans in particular would be far poorer for it.

Al Qaeda Fragmenting

From the Times of London:

Fed up with being part of a group that cuts off a person’s face with piano wire to teach others a lesson, dozens of low-level members of al-Qaeda in Iraq are daring to become informants for the US military in a hostile Baghdad neighbourhood.

The ground-breaking move in Doura is part of a wider trend that has started in other al-Qaeda hotspots across the country and in which Sunni insurgent groups and tribal sheikhs have stood together with the coalition against the extremist movement.

“They are turning. We are talking to people who we believe have worked for al-Qaeda in Iraq and want to reconcile and have peace,” said Colonel Ricky Gibbs, commander of the 4th Brigade, 1st Infantry Division, which oversees the area.

Read the whole thing here.

This is really great news. If al Qaeda's troops are beginning to crack, there is trouble throughout the organization. These are the sorts of things you usually see just before a major collapse. Not sayin it's gonna happen, but it certainly is a hopeful sign.

Michael Yon -- Oaths and Rules

Michael Yon has a fascinating post on a meeting of US, Iraqi and Insurgent leaders in which they try to forge a common set of rules for action and to work out just exactly what it is that they are fighting for. It's a terrific look the kind of interaction that will determine the future of the Iraqi people and of the US effort throughout the region.

Yon thinks that this is definitely a positive development, pregnant with hope for the future. I agree.

Read the post here.

McCain On Iraq

John McCain just gave a terrific speech on the Senate floor on the subject of Iraq.

No matter where my colleagues came down in 2003 about the centrality of Iraq to the war on terror, there can simply be no debate that our efforts in Iraq today are critical to the wider struggle against violent Islamic extremism. Already, the terrorists are emboldened, excited that America is talking not about winning in Iraq, but is rather debating when we should lose. Last week, Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda’s deputy chief, said that the United States is merely delaying our “inevitable” defeat in Iraq, and that “the Mujahideen of Islam in Iraq of the caliphate and jihad are advancing with steady steps towards victory.” He called on Muslims to travel to Iraq to fight Americans, and appealed for Muslims to support the Islamic State in Iraq, a group established by al Qaeda.

General Petraeus has called al Qaeda “the principal short-term threat to Iraq.” What do the supporters of this amendment believe to be the consequences of our leaving the battlefield with al Qaeda in place? If we leave Iraq prematurely, jihadists around the world will interpret the withdrawal as their great victory against our great power. Their movement thrives in an atmosphere of perceived victory; we saw this in the surge of men and money flowing to al Qaeda following the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan. If they defeat the United States in Iraq, they will believe that anything is possible, that history is on their side, that they really can bring their terrible rule to lands the world over. Recall the plan laid out in a letter from Zawahiri to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, before his death. That plan is to take shape in four stages: establish a caliphate in Iraq, extend the “jihad wave” to the secular countries neighboring Iraq, clash with Israel – none of which shall commence until the completion of stage one: expel the Americans from Iraq. Mr. President, the terrorists are in this war to win it. The question is: Are we?

The supporters of this amendment respond that they do not by any means intend to cede the battlefield to al Qaeda; on the contrary, their legislation would allow U.S. forces, presumably holed up in forward operating bases, to carry out targeted counterterrorism operations. But our own military commanders say that this approach will not succeed, and that moving in with search and destroy missions to kill and capture terrorists, only to immediately cede the territory to the enemy, is the failed strategy of the past three and a half years….

Those are the likely consequences of a precipitous withdrawal, and I hope that the supporters of such a move will tell us what they believe to be the likely consequences of this course of action. Should their amendment become law, and U.S. troops begin withdrawing, do they believe that Iraq will become more or less stable? That al Qaeda will find it easier to gather, plan, and carry out attacks from Iraqi soil, or that our withdrawal will somehow make this less likely? That the Iraqi people become more or less safe? That genocide becomes a more remote possibility or ever likelier?

Mr. President, this fight is about Iraq but not about Iraq alone. It is greater than that and more important still, about whether America still has the political courage to fight for victory or whether we will settle for defeat, with all of the terrible things that accompany it. We cannot walk away gracefully from defeat in this war.

Hat tip, K-Lo.

Emphases mine

Yon on the Surge

Hugh Hewitt interviewed Michael Yon. Here's what Yon had to say regarding the surge:

HH: Yesterday, on CNN, Senator Joe Lieberman said we’ve got the enemy, al Qaeda, on the run. We’ve chased them out of Anbar Province. We’ve chased them now to Diyala. All of this is possible because of the surge. And then Michael Ware, whom I know you respect for his courage, went on with Anderson Cooper and said that I’m afraid that Senator Lieberman has taken an excursion into fantasy. Who’s telling the truth here, Michael Yon?

MY: Well, you know, al Qaeda’s not been wiped out of Iraq by any means, and there’s still some serious fighting to do. But what we have seen is if you give al Qaeda time, they will alienate the local population for us. So I mean, they almost prep it for us to get rid of them. You know, a lot of them that were not killed or captured here in Baquba in the last three weeks did move out to other places. So they’re not gone. I mean, so there’s some truth to what Mick Ware says. However, there are fewer and fewer hiding places for them to go. They can’t go to the south in Basra. They’re not welcome there. They can’t, there’s only a few places they can go to in Anbar, and those are drying up. There’s fewer places in Diyala, and what is left is drying up. They certainly cannot go to the Kurdish regions, because they will be killed. So they can still go to Nineveh, but the ISF in Nineveh is up where Mosul is the capitol. They can go up there, but the ISF, or the Iraqi Security Forces up there are pretty well advanced, and they can hold their own now, and I saw them doing it again earlier this year when I was back in Nineveh. You know, I spent a good part of 2005 up there. So you know, I’ve seen tremendous progress in different parts of Iraq, but this is not going to be solved in six months or a year. We’ve just got to settle in for the long haul, but you know, if you’ve been here long enough, you can see that progress is being made.

Read the whole thing here.

The problem is that there is very little likelihood that we will be able to sustain the troop levels required for the long haul past September, and as I noted in the previous post, many experts feel that a lower level of commitment just won't work.

No Middle Ground

David Adesnik over at Oxblog cites expert opinion on why the "redeployment" option currently being advocated by Congressional Democrats is unworkable. He concludes that with regard to Iraq there is no feasible middle ground between the current level of involvement and total withdrawal.

Tom Friedman, representing the New York Times position, argues for total and immediate withdrawal as a way of cutting our losses. Stephen Biddle, on the other hand, argues for staying the course. Both agree that the middle ground of a small force is unfeasible. Adesnik's position? He is not yet convinced that the cause is lost and argues that total withdrawal will produce:

Another Darfur and another Saigon. A moral failure and an epic humiliation. That is the cost of surrender.

I agree with him.

Iraq Commentary -- Pro and Con

Kimberly Kagan, writing in the WSJ makes the argument for staying the course in Iraq.

The larger aim of the new strategy is creating an opportunity for Iraq's leaders to negotiate a political settlement. These negotiations are underway. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is attempting to form a political coalition with Amar al-Hakim and Kurdish political leaders, but excluding Moqtada al-Sadr, and has invited Sunnis to participate. He has confronted Moqtada al-Sadr for promoting illegal militia activity, and has apparently prompted this so-called Iraqi nationalist to leave for Iran for the second time since January.

Provincial and local government is growing stronger. Local and tribal leaders in Anbar, Diyala, Salah ad-Din, North Babil and even Baghdad have agreed to fight insurgents and terrorists as U.S. forces have moved in to secure the population alongside their Iraqi partners. As a result, the number of Iraqis recruited for the police forces, in particular, has risen exponentially since 2006.

This is war, and the enemy is reacting. The enemy uses suicide bombs, car bombs and brutal executions to break our will and that of our Iraqi allies. American casualties often increase as troops move into areas that the enemy has fortified; these casualties will start to fall again once the enemy positions are destroyed. Al Qaeda will manage to get some car and truck bombs through, particularly in areas well-removed from the capital and its belts.

But we should not allow individual atrocities to obscure the larger picture. A new campaign has just begun, it is already yielding important results, and its effects are increasing daily. Demands for withdrawal are no longer demands to pull out of a deteriorating situation with little hope; they are now demands to end a new approach to this conflict that shows every sign of succeeding.

[Emphasis mine]

Read the whole thing here.

The New York Times makes the case for immediate withdrawal.

It is time for the United States to leave Iraq, without any more delay than the Pentagon needs to organize an orderly exit.

Like many Americans, we have put off that conclusion, waiting for a sign that President Bush was seriously trying to dig the United States out of the disaster he created by invading Iraq without sufficient cause, in the face of global opposition, and without a plan to stabilize the country afterward.

At first, we believed that after destroying Iraq’s government, army, police and economic structures, the United States was obliged to try to accomplish some of the goals Mr. Bush claimed to be pursuing, chiefly building a stable, unified Iraq. When it became clear that the president had neither the vision nor the means to do that, we argued against setting a withdrawal date while there was still some chance to mitigate the chaos that would most likely follow.

While Mr. Bush scorns deadlines, he kept promising breakthroughs — after elections, after a constitution, after sending in thousands more troops. But those milestones came and went without any progress toward a stable, democratic Iraq or a path for withdrawal. It is frighteningly clear that Mr. Bush’s plan is to stay the course as long as he is president and dump the mess on his successor. Whatever his cause was, it is lost.

....

This country faces a choice. We can go on allowing Mr. Bush to drag out this war without end or purpose. Or we can insist that American troops are withdrawn as quickly and safely as we can manage — with as much effort as possible to stop the chaos from spreading.

Read the whole thing here.

The NYT editorial prompted a point by point "fisking" by Victor Davis Hansen which concludes:

[A]s the Times itself acknowledges, what has happened in the past only previews what is in store if we precipitously withdraw. And this will prove the case not only in Iraq, but elsewhere in the Persian Gulf, the Middle East, Taiwan, and Korea. Once the U.S. demonstrates that it cannot honor its commitments, those dependent upon it must make the necessary adjustments. Ironically, while the Times urges acceptance of defeat, Sunni tribesmen at last are coming forward to fight terrorists, and regional neighbors are gradually accepting the truth that their opportunistic assistance to jihadists is only threatening their own regimes.

We promised General Petraeus a hearing in September; it would be the height of folly to preempt that agreement by giving in to our summer of panic and despair. Critics called for the resignation of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, a change in command in Iraq and at Centcom, new strategies, and more troops. But now that we have a new secretary, a new command in Iraq and at Centcom, new strategies, and more troops, suddenly we have a renewed demand for withdrawal before the agreed-upon September accounting—suggesting that the only constant in such harping was the assumption that Iraq was either hopeless or not worth the effort.

The truth is that Iraq has upped the ante in the war against terrorists. Our enemies’ worst nightmare is a constitutional government in the heart of the ancient caliphate, surrounded by consensual rule in Afghanistan, Lebanon, and Turkey; ours is a new terror heaven, but with oil, a strategic location, and the zeal born of a humiliating defeat of the United States on a theater scale. The Islamists believe we can’t win; so does the New York Times. But it falls to the American people to decide the issue.

Read the whole thing here. Prof. Davis' point-by-point demolition of the NYT argument is an extraordinary expose of the illogic and dishonesty underlying much of the left's position on the war. IMHO it is a must-read.

al Ameriki

Michael Yon reports from Iraq. Things are going very, very well right now..., important things. He also has some interesting things to say about the behavior of the MSM journalists.

As the major fighting wound down:

Media coverage went from a near monopoly (Michael Gordon from New York Times and me) to a nearly capsized boat as journalists flooded in from other parts of Iraq to see the fight. They managed to miss most of it. Today, I’m told, there are now only 3 journalists remaining, including one writer (me.)

As with the Battle for Mosul, which I held in near monopoly for about five months during 2005, the most interesting parts of the Battle for Baqubah are unfolding after the major fighting ends. But as the guns cool, the media stops raining and starts evaporating, or begins making only short visits of a week or so.

The big news on the streets today is that the people of Baqubah are generally ecstatic, although many hold in reserve a serious concern that we will abandon them again. For many Iraqis, we have morphed from being invaders to occupiers to members of a tribe. I call it the “al Ameriki tribe,” or “tribe America.”

I’ve seen this kind of progression in Mosul, out in Anbar and other places, and when I ask our military leaders if they have sensed any shift, many have said, yes, they too sense that Iraqis view us differently. In the context of sectarian and tribal strife, we are the tribe that people can—more or less and with giant caveats—rely on.

Most Iraqis I talk with acknowledge that if it was ever about the oil, it’s not now. Not mostly anyway. It clearly would have been cheaper just to buy the oil or invade somewhere easier that has more. Similarly, most Iraqis seem now to realize that we really don’t want to stay here, and that many of us can’t wait to get back home. They realize that we are not resolved to stay, but are impatient but to drive down to Kuwait and sail away. And when they consider the Americans who actually deal with Iraqis every day, the Iraqis can no longer deny that we really do want them to succeed. But we want them to succeed without us. We want to see their streets are clean and safe, their grass is green, and their birds are singing. We want to see that on television. Not in person. We don’t want to be here. We tell them that every day. It finally has settled in that we are telling the truth.

Now that all those realizations and more have settled in, the dynamics here are changing in palpable ways.

Read the whole thing here.

The trouble is, things are also changing in Washington where Republican Senators are beginning to turn tail. The Iraqis are right to worry about our willingness to see the job through. Once again it begins to look as if the US will abandon the fight just as the tide is turning. Maybe the Iraqis now understand that Bush tells the truth and that the war was not just an oil grab, but the narrative the Democrats are pushing says just the opposite and all too many Americans have embraced it.

UPDATE:

Maybe this will help a bit. Michael Gordon reports from Bakubah in the NYT:

The American military has struggled for more than four years to train and equip the Iraqi Army. But here the local Sunni residents, including a number of former insurgents from the 1920s Revolution Brigades, have emerged as a linchpin of the American strategy.

The new coalition reflects some hard-headed calculations on both sides. Eager for intelligence on their elusive foes, American officers have been willing to overlook the past of some of their newfound allies.

Many Sunnis, for their part, are less inclined to see the soldiers as occupiers now that it is clear that American troop reductions are all but inevitable, and they are more concerned with strengthening their ability to fend off threats from Sunni jihadists and Shiite militias. In a surprising twist, the jihadists — the Americans’ most ardent foes — made the new strategy possible. Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, a predominantly Iraqi organization with a small but significant foreign component, severely overplayed its hand, spawning resentment by many residents and other insurgent groups.

Generally speaking Gordon seems to be supporting Yon's position, that real progress is being made through the introduction of new tactics. Working through local militias rather than the formal instruments of an Iraqi state may well be the path toward a viable political settlement that will produce, in time, a functioning Arab democracy.

Read Gordon's piece here.

One of the most interesting things about the current conflict and the debate over it is that old templates and narratives are manifestly inappropriate to the current situation and people are being forced to innovate. We are moving into a new era, a perilous and exciting one.

The Killing Fields

Michael Yon's latest report from Iraq is up. Check it out here. Warning, this is really rough stuff, so if you don't have a strong stomach avoid it. He shows what al Qaeda did to a village they occupied.

You won't see any of this stuff in the MSM.

Michael Ledeen comments:

"We must be clear about the nature of the war and the bestial nature of our enemies."

Yon's latest provides a clear picture of the terrorists' savage methods. Literally, because it's mostly photographs of what happened to a village that fell into the claws of al Qaeda. They just tore apart the villagers, their livestock, their children and women, and then boobytrapped the area to try to kill our guys, knowing that they would honor the dead.

And then I think about the terrorists' latest efforts in England and Scotland, where only innocents were targeted. And of course 9/11. And then I think of so many of our leaders, who seem to be preparing to retreat from Iraq (and therefore Afghanistan), thereby leaving the beasts, as Michael Yon properly calls them, an even broader area of operation.

And then I return to my mantra: the war is much bigger than iraq, we cannot win it in iraq alone, and there is no escape from this war. They are already here, and "bringing the boys home" will gain us nothing. It will only increase the number of victims.

Read it here.

Baghdad -- The Need for Reconciliation

USA Today has a nice piece on the day to day operation of the surge in Baghdad.

Main points:

1) The American presence in neighborhoods is making a big difference:

When this combat outpost, named Casino, was established in January, Ghazaliyah was a battleground. Shiite militias had pushed Sunnis from their homes in this predominantly Sunni neighborhood. That drove many Sunnis to al-Qaeda, concentrated in southern Ghazaliyah, for protection.

Streets were empty and stores closed. Gunfire crackled around the outpost each day. U.S. forces would find 15 bodies a day in the area, many of them victims of sectarian killings, said Joyce....

"Now we have a bad day (when we) find one," Joyce said.

So this is the situation: a Shiite dominated army wants revenge on the Sunnis for atrocities committed in the past and the Sunnis have turned to al Qaeda for protection. Could those hindsighters who claim that disbanding Saddam's army was a blunder please explain how keeping a Sunni/Baathist organization that had committed innumerable atrocities on the Shiite majority, would be in any way better? The situation would just be reversed, and it would be the Shiites who would be harboring al Qaeda.

2) Civilians are benefiting greatly from the presence of American troops. Not only is the level of violence down, attempts by Shiite militias to ethnically cleanse Sunnis out of their neighborhoods have stopped. Americans have become very popular in the Sunni neighborhoods.

3) The presence of American troops has improved the confidence and performance of Iraqi troops.

4) This is very dangerous because it exposes American troops to harm. That's why casualties are up.

5) Both Shiites and Sunnis have unrealistic expectations:

Sunnis in the neighborhood trust Americans over Iraqi soldiers. "Shiites want the Iraqi army on every street corner, which isn't going to happen," Cartee said. "Sunnis want Americans on every corner, which isn't going to happen.

6) The only solution is reconciliation among leaders on sides.

And that is the point of the whole surge.

Read it here.

What the Surge is All About

Responding to the "whack-a-molers" who claim that defeating al Qaeda in one location is meaningless because they will just appear elsewhere, David Kilcullen writes:

These operations are qualitatively different from what we have done before. Our concept is to knock over several insurgent safe havens simultaneously, in order to prevent terrorists relocating their infrastructure from one to another, and to create an operational synergy between what we're doing in Baghdad and what's happening outside. Unlike on previous occasions, we don't plan to leave these areas once they’re secured. These ops will run over months, and the key activity is to stand up viable local security forces in partnership with Iraqi Army and Police, as well as political and economic programs, to permanently secure them. The really decisive activity will be police work, registration of the population and counterintelligence in these areas, to comb out the insurgent sleeper cells and political cells that have "gone quiet" as we moved in, but which will try to survive through the op and emerge later. This will take operational patience, and it will be intelligence-led, and Iraqi government-led. It will probably not make the news (the really important stuff rarely does) but it will be the truly decisive action.

When we speak of "clearing" an enemy safe haven, we are not talking about destroying the enemy in it; we are talking about rescuing the population in it from enemy intimidation. If we don't get every enemy cell in the initial operation, that's OK. The point of the operations is to lift the pall of fear from population groups that have been intimidated and exploited by terrorists to date, then win them over and work with them in partnership to clean out the cells that remain – as has happened in Al Anbar Province and can happen elsewhere in Iraq as well.

The "terrain" we are clearing is human terrain, not physical terrain. It is about marginalizing al Qa’ida, Shi’a extremist militias, and the other terrorist groups from the population they prey on. This is why claims that “80% of AQ leadership have fled” don’t overly disturb us: the aim is not to kill every last AQ leader, but rather to drive them off the population and keep them off, so that we can work with the community to prevent their return.

Read the whole thing here.

I say it again..., this is a war of liberation, not of conquest and empire.

A Perfect War?

Victor Davis Hanson has a terrific article on "The Lessons of D-Day". He recounts the terrible blunders and deadly errors made by allied forces in that most celebrated of military campaigns, and the terrible carnage suffered by allied troops in the Pacific theater. He concludes:

By any historical measure, our forefathers committed as many strategic and tactical blunders as we have in Afghanistan and Iraq - but lost tens of thousands more Americans as a result of such errors. We worry about emboldening Iran by going into Iraq; the Normandy generation fretted about empowering a colossal Soviet Union.

....

[T]he Normandy campaign reminds us that war is by nature horrific, fraught with foolish error - and only won by the side that commits the least number of mistakes. Our grandfathers knew that. So they pressed on as best they could, convinced that they needn't be perfect, only good enough, to win.

The American lesson of D-Day and its aftermath was how to overcome occasional abject stupidity while never giving up in the face of an utterly savage enemy. We need to remember that now more than ever.

Read the whole thing here.

The takeover of academic departments by the anti-war Left after Vietnam has created a terrible deficiency in the teaching of history. Military history is generally neglected. Many leading departments have no military historians on their staffs. The subject has all but disappeared from many standard textbooks, and is only discussed in a negative and superficial way in others. The result has been a general ignorance regarding the essential nature of warfare and this vacuum has been filled by Hollywood-style fantasies and delusions.

Previous generations of Americans knew, because there were always veterans around to tell them, what war was really like, and in those few places where military history is still taught and studied the memory persists, but in the MSM and general public the delusion is widespread that adequate planning and management can, and should, result in a clean and painless conflict. Today's American forces have come as close as humanly possible to such a situation. Few major conflicts in history, and none in the American experience, can approach the current one for efficiency and competent execution, but unscrupulous ideologues, political opportunists, and a corrupt media insist that the war has been "bungled."

It is good that we have people like Dr. Hanson around to remind us of just how delusional and dishonest current critiques of the Iraq campaign are.

Turkish Troops Move Into Iraq

A few thousand Turkish troops, responding to Kurdish acts of terrorism, have moved into northern Iraq and seem determined to remain there. These invaders are backed up by tens of thousands of Turkish troops who have moved up to the border.

This is scary stuff -- if all sides are not careful it could easily escalate into the all-out regional war that has long been predicted. The Kurds are playing with fire and must be reined in. Official US sources deny that anything has happened, but the reports are many and credible.

Pajamas Media is all over this one. [here]

UPDATE:

Well, now, it seems that not just US forces, but also the White House, the Turkish government, and the Iraqi government are denying that any invasion took place. Interesting.

Read it here.

Kurdish Warrior Women

Gateway Pundit has the scoop here. Peshmurga women are scary tough. Guess they have to be, considering that their country is divided and surrounded by enemies. But there is a seriously important point behind the story. The occasion of the demonstration was the turnover by the allied forces in three more provinces to Iraqi control. This rattles the Turks, Iranians, and others in the region but is a major step toward bringing the current conflict to a successful conclusion.

Hmmmm, there seems to be an awful lot of good news coming out of Iraq these days, now that the elections are over and the Democrats control Congress -- guess there's not as much need to tell the big lie over and over again.

Horrible, horrible! The Killing of Du'a HKhalil Aswad

And the Kurds are supposed to be the good guys!

A 17-year-old girl has been stoned to death in Iraq because she loved a teenage boy of the wrong religion.

As a horrifying video of the stoning went out on the Internet, the British arm of Amnesty International condemned the death of Du’a Khalil Aswad as "an abhorrent murder" and demanded that her killers be brought to justice.

Reports from Iraq said a local security force witnessed the incident, but did nothing to try to stop it. Now her boyfriend is in hiding in fear for his life.

Miss Aswad, a member of a minority Kurdish religious group called Yezidi, was condemned to death as an "honour killing" by other men in her family and hardline religious leaders because of her relationship with the Sunni Muslim boy.

They said she had shamed herself and her family when she failed to return home one night. Some reports suggested she had converted to Islam to be closer to her boyfriend.

Miss Aswad had taken shelter in the house of a Yezidi tribal leader in Bashika, a predominantly Kurdish town near the northern capital, Mosul.

A large crowd watched as eight or nine men stormed the house and dragged Miss Aswad into the street. There they hurled stones at her for half an hour until she was dead.

The stoning happened last month, but only came to light yesterday with the release of the Internet video.

Read it here.

The Kurds have officially outlawed honor killings, but the laws are generally ignored. Security forces watched the killing and did nothing! Already the stoning has spurred retaliatory slayings of Yezidi workers. And the cycle of violence goes on and on.

You read these things and you realize that there can never be compromise between the humanistic values of the West and these barbaric cultures. Relativism is bunk. We must never, never, never, never, never yield an inch to such madness.