Michael Yon reports on a meeting held between US forces and the Iraqi Islamic Party, whose spokesman comes from a politically influential tribe in Iraq. At the meeting, Yon noticed that the usual singular focus on security issues has declined to a lower-priority agenda item, and that rebuilding issues now receive the most attention. The IIP spokesman explained why:
“Al Qaeda in Iraq is defeated,” according to Sheik Omar Jabouri, spokesman for the Iraqi Islamic Party and a member of the widespread and influential Jabouri Tribe. Speaking through an interpreter at a 31 October meeting at the Iraqi Islamic Party headquarters in downtown Baghdad, Sheik Omar said that al Qaeda had been “defeated mentally, and therefore is defeated physically,” referring to how clear it has become that the terrorist group’s tactics have backfired. Operatives who could once disappear back into the crowd after committing an increasingly atrocious attack no longer find safe haven among the Iraqis who live in the southern part of Baghdad. They are being hunted down and killed. Or, if they are lucky, captured by Americans.
Colonel Ricky Gibbs, the American brigade commander with responsibility for the Rashid District in south Baghdad today told me, “So goes South Baghdad goes Baghdad.” General Petraeus had told me similar things about the importance of South Baghdad. In fact, Rashid is quickly developing into what might be one of the final serious battlegrounds of the war.
AQI has tried shifting strategies, moving away from inflaming sectarian conflict now that they have been discovered as its main provocateurs. Now they have started to create rifts between the tribes, ironically arriving at a tribal strategy later than the Americans. Omar told Yon that the tribes won’t play along this time, as they can see exactly what AQI wants to do. In fact, leaders have warned the young men in the tribes that they will kill them if they work with AQI — and 70 Jabouris have found out how serious the leaders are about that policy.
We certainly saw the mental defeat and collapse of morale indirectly in Osama bin Laden’s last message. Their collapse in western Iraq and flight to the borders indicate how seriously they have lost, and the large declines in violence show how effective AQI provocations had been until the surge and the opposition of the tribes in the Awakening took place. AQI terrorists can no longer hide in Iraqi populations, because hiding among Iraqis has become more dangerous than getting captured by the Americans. Instead, they’re running away from Iraq.
If AQI collapses entirely in Iraq, it will be a severe blow to bin Laden’s network. He had made Iraq a central front for his war against Western influence in the region and personally blessed this branch of his organization. Osama will look impotent in a failure on that scale — and that could prove fatal to AQ and eventually to Osama himself.
Bogart said to Bergman, “We’ll always have Paris.”
bin Laden can say to AQ, “We’ll always have Pakistan.”
Until they don’t.
Wait! I thought the war in Iraq was lost! Harry Reid said so!
Maybe he was speaking on behalf of AQI…
Don’t say it too loud until the election gets closer. The unprincipled Dems will spin on a dime and say I am surprised you were able to do it, but our noble troops pulled your failed policies out of the fire and were still able to win.
OK were done now, lets redeploy.
I’m not ready to declare victory yet. We may be in the mop-up phase now, but there is still plenty of work to be done. It would be in line with their agitprop methods for AQ to poor-mouth their current situation; the next thing you’ll see is how “unfair” it is that the American and Iraqi forces have such an advantage (another line that will play well with the Leftists in America and Europe). For once, let’s not try to wrap this up early with some kind of brokered deal that leaves AQ alive to rebuild and strike again in the future. Let’s press on to actual victory.
Wasn’t that long ago when the term “Long War” was derided, and sent to the dust bin. But Long War is exactly what we are involved in and how it will play out. There is no question at all that a military defeat of AQI and AQ in general is going to happen. The questions should be when, and how we can effect this coming about soonest.
The battlefield defeats of AQI on the ground are a result of the surge, and a consolidation in country-wide tactics across military, economic and social lines, and the Iraqis are looking more and more toward being Iraqis first and no longer enslaved by their religious affiliation.
A defeat of AQI will lead, as part of a larger package, to the defeat of AQ. The defeat of AQ is predicated on reducing the number of AQ fighters, disrupting their leadership down to the cell level, and offering a broad number of Moslems in the region an alternative that does not cause them to lose sons and fathers and brothers to a “cause” that thus far has brought them nothing but misery and death.
Once AQ has been exposed and displayed as nothing more than a resurgence of the Mahdi at Khartoum of the 19th Century, an organization of thugs perverting the Koran, killing more Moslems than Isreal, the U.S. or any other foreign power combined, the gild will come off the lily.
Such is happening neighborhood by neighborhood in Iraq. The defeatists in Congress and across America and Europe who do not have a direct vested interest in what is happening on the ground inside Iraq serve only to enable AQ to filter away to establish themselves elsewhere and continue the fight. The reason for this Long War being so protracted is that AQI ands AQ in general have allies, willing allies, who see Bush as more of a threat to world peace and stability than the actual murderers who wrap themselves up in the Koran to kill other Moslems. Both AQ and their allies must be addreseed, and soon.
Destroy AQI and AQ. Hold accountable for the next generation all those who allied themselves with AQI and AQ by their willful protraction of this war. Continue to march inside iraq and elsewhere where the U.S. military and our allies are identifying, destroying and rounding up AQ and sympathizers. Press on with the re-development of Iraq, and over time, the rest of the region.
What will victory look like? An Iraq and a Middle East set free of the decades long stereotype of being nothing but a home for terrorists and an economic wasteland.
What will defeat look like? It’ll make Vietnam look like a very minor footnote in history.
No! The war is lost! Even if it’s won! /cycloptichorn
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-violence1nov01,1,7359935.story?coll=la-headlines-world&ctrack=1&cset=true
Iraqi civilian deaths down again in the month of October.
Of course, it’s the LAT Dog Trainer, so who knows if the numbers are accurate…
The Sunnis aren’t kidding around.
Liveleak has/had a video of Sunnis leading an al Qaeda terrorist out to a sand berm and then hosing him down with AK-47s for about two full minutes.
I tend to avoid watching stuff like that, but I made an exception for this dude, who went to his death pleading and pathetically covering his face with his hands, as if he could ward off the bullets that way. Sickening and horrible, a total waste and perversion of human potential.
Why do so many terrorists blubber and beg when they’re about to die? I mean, they had no problem slaughtering thousands in the name of their filthy god. They cut people’s heads off for Allah, but when faced with a few bullets they lose it.
Leftists will never live down calling these pieces of garbage “freedom fighters” or “the resistance.”
chaos….I can do one better….
NO! even if the war is won, it’s only because of HILLARY! Bush screwed it all up and lost it, so harry reid was RIGHT….HILLARY! won this war!!!
cycloptichorn
Noooo! Al Qaeda is not even in Iraq, and is defeating us on all fronts there! We must drop all our equipment and run back to New Mexico, where Dunkirk is spelled Albaquerque…
Just you wait until Iran’s Holy Warriors cross the Yalu, uh, the Eurphrates… just you wait, boy!
IRAQ IS BUSH’S KOREA!
It would be interesting to hear Pelosi’s spin on this as soon as Syria gives her permission.
Front Page News…Theoretically
This seemed like a very important story, from Tuesday’s Houston Chronicle:: Oct. 31, 2007, 12:53AM Freed sheiks celebrate quick rescue Iraq military, backed by U.S., found kidnapped Sunni and Shiite leaders By HAMZA HENDAWI Associated Press BAGHDAD — I…