Posted on 10/18/2007 6:44:33 AM PDT by StatenIsland
Al Qaeda in Iraq on the Run Maybe the U.S. Congress will save it?
By Clifford D. May
Al Qaeda is on the horns of a dilemma. Last month, some 30 of its senior leaders in Iraq were killed or captured. Now, Osama bin Laden faces a tough decision: Send reinforcements to Iraq in an attempt to regain the initiative? That risks losing those combatants, too — and that could seriously diminish his global organization. But the alternative is equally unappealing: accept defeat in Iraq, the battlefield bin Laden has called central to the struggle al Qaeda is waging against America and its allies.
Hard times for al Qaeda should be good news for America but you wouldn’t know it from the reaction of the antiwar movement and their sympathizers in Congress and the elite media. Many have been unwilling even to acknowledge that U.S. forces are fighting al Qaeda in Iraq. They claim we are merely refereeing a civil war and/or combating Iraqi “resistance” to American “occupation.”
CNN this week ran a special called “Meeting Resistance,” a documentary about what it called “ordinary Iraqis …taking up arms and fighting the Americans.” Earlier this month Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D., Va.) lamented that Congress had been unable to pass legislation to “change the mission away from deep involvement in Iraq’s civil war and toward a more narrow focus on fighting al-Qaeda.”
How startled CNN producers and the Senator must have been to see the front-page story this week in the Washington Post reporting that American troops have dealt “devastating and perhaps irreversible blows to al-Qaeda in Iraq.” If our forces have achieved this without it being their mission, and despite the “resistance” of “ordinary Iraqis,” they must be warriors unlike any the world has seen since Thermopylae.
Is it ignorance or partisanship that makes so many politicians and media moguls blind to what has been happening in Iraq over recent months? Do they really not understand the dramatic change in strategy implemented by Gen. David Petraeus, the new American commander in Iraq?
That key to that strategy, known as the “surge,” is not the number of troops deployed — though a minimum force size is necessary — but rather how they are utilized. Col. Wayne W. Grigsby, Jr., who commands a “surge” brigade based in a mixed Sunni and Shia area near Baghdad, made it simple for me in a phone conversation this week: “We do not commute to work,” he said. “We live in the towns with the people we are here to help.”
That means providing them with security — gathering intelligence from them about where the terrorists are hiding, and then eliminating them, their safe havens, their bomb factories and their weapons caches. Do that and the bloodshed begins to subside.
“The Iraqi people are fed up with the violence and with the extremists, both Sunni and Shia,” Grigsby said. Far from “resisting” the American troops in their communities, “they want to join the fight and protect their neighborhoods. They are coming to us and saying, ‘How can we help? We don’t want to live like this.’”
Volunteers do not form sectarian militias. On the contrary, Grigbsy said, “they want to be recognized as legitimate members of the Iraqi security forces.”
American troops also facilitate economic and political development — something, they say, ordinary Iraqis sincerely desire. What about reconciliation? “I see signs of Sunni and Shia getting along,” the colonel answered. And there is, increasingly, “grass-roots governance. People aren’t waiting for the central government to act.”
Despite the fact that many more American troops are now deployed “outside the wire,” the number of soldiers killed in action is down 64 percent from May, the month before the “surge in numbers” reached full strength and the “surge of operations” began against al Qaeda cells, Iranian-backed militias and other enemies of America and Iraq.
And now bin Laden has to choose: send his most capable lieutenants to try to reheat the insurgency in Iraq; or cede the battlefield to the Americans and the majority of Iraqis who have no interest either in blowing people up or embracing the al Qaeda way of life.
The first course risks losing combatants who could otherwise be promoting al Qaeda’s agenda in Hamburg or New Jersey. As for the second course, bin Laden has said that the “world war” raging in Iraq will end in “either victory and glory, or misery and humiliation.”
At this moment, al Qaeda in Iraq seems likely to suffer the latter. Confronted by America’s adaptable, agile and courageous military forces, its only hope is divine intervention — and maybe the U.S. Congress.
And imagine further the hell that Democrats could inflict on future generations of Americans with their policies of defeat and appeasement...
The same incrementalism that worked so well in Viet Nam is being put to work in Iraq. Trouble is, W’s out of time.
Osama: “The war’s lost!”
Harry Reid: “Hey! That’s my line!”
The Surge has Worked and Victory is Ours, NO thanks to the Rats. The Stone Age Press will be reporting our failures from the back of the Victory Parades.
Pray for W and Our Troops
Bears repeating. :-) Is the media on the verge of reaping what it has sown?
How do you figure that?
What’s he going to do in the year he has left ? Another surge ?
Just like they have half the population convinced that we are in a recession in the midst of a booming economy. They are unreal.
BTTT!
So, you’re really don’t have any figuring behind that statement.
15 months is a very long time.
This culture has always responded to strength. When we show that we are not only going to kill the enemy, but also occupy the areas the enemy once had they will support us. It also means we are going to have to be there a long time till they learn how to deal with the external and internal terrorists.
My thinking is it's always better to kill the enemy before they come here.
ROCK ON, TROOPS!!!!!!
God Bless you and your families...
Kick Butt!
Why would he do that? This one's yielding significant results.
How do you figure that?
Good point. I think Dubya is going to work very hard in his last 14 months in office. He will allow Patreus to continue to take the fight to Al Qaeda. I expect more and more good news to come out of Iraq. By the time Dubya leaves office our goals to establish a stable Iraq will be irreversible, regardless of who will be the next President.
If the current “paradigm” shift is real, then Bushhead may just come out of
this smelling like a genius.
Count the loozers:
1) al quada and Bin Lardass
2) Iran/Syria
3) Russia
4) France/Germany
5) Harry, Nancy and the Dems
This is by no means intended as an inclusive list nor is it in any
particular order.
MV
Col. Wayne W. Grigsby, Jr., who commands a “surge” brigade based in a mixed Sunni and Shia area near Baghdad, made it simple for me in a phone conversation this week: “We do not commute to work,” he said. “We live in the towns with the people we are here to help.”
Beautiful. Spoken like a true leader.
It’s a good article, but like most such articles it isn’t pointing out the larger strategic facts such as Al Qaeda being unable to expand their war into Israel...being unable to take over Egypt...losing Somalia to Ethiopian Christians...losing Lebanon (twice!)...being unable to overthrow Musharraf in Pakistan...losing Libya...losing Liberia...losing Afghanistan, etc.
Which is to say, it isn’t *just* that Al Qaeda is getting its clock cleaned in Iraq. It’s also that solidly Islamic nations such as Jordan have declared war...not against the U.S...but against Al Qaeda itself!
And in the process, the U.S. has *more* allies today than we had prior to 2003.
In contrast, nations that once opposed our mission in Iraq now support it (e.g. France). Leaders who opposed the Iraq War are out of power.
Schroeder is gone from Germany. Martin is gone in Canada. Chirac is gone in France. Hussein is dead in Iraq.
So Al Qaeda is losing, and losing in a big way not only militarily, but also politically/diplomatically.
Is it any surprise that Al Qaeda has been unable to repeat 9/11 here in the U.S. after President Bush took the war to anti-American elements worldwide?!
What about all of the other terrorist organizations in Iraq? Are they also on the run?
Hey, I subscribe to the Powell doctrine. But, we didn’t follow the doctrine. To spin off Rummy’s wit, we fight the war we’ve got.
I also believe that when Bush chose Petraeus he also chose to pursue a follow-on strategy dependent on the success of “the surge.” Whatever that strategy might be, so long as the results are positive, Petraeus has an implacable will in Bush supporting him.
And if Petraeus does continue to effect the goals we set out to accomplish, the Democrats become increasing impotent and politically vulnerable. IMHO, of course. :-)
The mistakes of a 1,000 days ago, if they were all mistakes, are utterly useless contemplation. What matters is what happens today and tomorrow and the next day. Don’t ya think?
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