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How to win in Iraq

As resistance to freedom, democracy and human rights in Iraq goes on for years, with tens of thousands of civilians now killed by the fascist insurgency, something new must be tried. To the left and the "realist" right, that new thing is to surrender, and to ensure that it was all for nothing, and to leave the Iraq problem unsolved and festering for a new generation. To the neo-con right, that new thing is the thing that Bush should have done in summer 2003 when he was on a roll but stopped - confronting Iran and Syria.

I don't know what the answer is. It is unbearably depressing that the Iraqis haven't seized perhaps their only chance for freedom in this lifetime. One is inclined to just give up on the Arabs and say they aren't ready for democracy, and we have to try again in 30 years.

On the other hand, maybe it is impossible and unrealistic to expect Iraqi freedom to flower in the shadow of the aggressive, unreformed and emboldened terror states of Iran and Syria. Maybe the job is only half done. Maybe the violence of all-out war on Iran and Syria really is the least worst option. It's not enough to just say withdraw and everything will be ok. As Vietnam showed, that may be the option that leads to the most killing, not the least. It may even be the path that leads to nuclear war (with a Greater Iran). All-out war with Germany in 1933 was, in hindsight, the least worst option. But who could possibly have made that decision at the time?

• The West loses momentum, after 2004

• Why Iraq Is Crumbling by Charles Krauthammer, November 17, 2006 - "We have given the Iraqis a republic, and they do not appear able to keep it."
  • He thinks the US has made errors: "not shooting looters, not installing an Iraqi exile government right away, and not taking out Moqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army in its infancy in 2004"
  • But ultimately the Iraqis have failed to seize their great gift of freedom: "Nonetheless, the root problem lies with Iraqis and their political culture." He refuses to concede yet that Arabs can't do democracy: "the problem here is Iraq's particular political culture, raped and ruined by 30 years of Hussein's totalitarianism. What was left in its wake was a social desert, a dearth of the trust and good will and sheer human capital required for democratic governance."
  • He (like all of Iraq's hawkish friends in the West) thinks prime minister Nouri al-Maliki is corrupt and useless, unable to take on the Shia militias, and part of the problem rather than part of the solution in the sectarian civil war.

How to win in Iraq I - "Go long" (stay the course)

It may be that this insurgency is simply a war of attrition - if America does not give up, then the jihad will simply give up, and move on to other battlefields, as they did in Algeria. It may be that the allies simply need to convince the jihadis that they will never give up, and then the jihadis will leave Iraq alone, and abandon the fight.

Only years of western resolve can do this - and the Democrats must support this resolve. If the jihadis think a future Democrat president will abandon Iraq, then this encourages them to keep fighting.

• Iraqi general rallies Fallujah elders to support U.S. Marines (copy here). Talking about the Americans, he says: "We can make them use their rifles against us or we can make them build our country, it's your choice. ... They were brought here by the acts of one coward who was hunted out of a rathole - Saddam - who disgraced us all. Let us tell our children that these men came here to protect us. As President Bush said, they did not come here to occupy our land but to get rid of Saddam. We can help them leave by helping them do their job, or we can make them stay ten years and more by keeping fighting."
• Washington War Wobbles: No Time For Doubt by Amir Taheri - "The nationwide anti-American insurrection promised by media headlines just a week ago has not happened. ... Iraq is not about to disintegrate. Nor is it on the verge of civil war. Despite becoming the focus of anti-American energies in the past year, it is one of the few places in the Middle East where the United States still enjoys goodwill. Notwithstanding the forebodings of doom coming from "experts" who know nothing of Iraq, the newly liberated nation could, as President Bush has promised, become a model of democratization for other Arabs. Iraq will be won or lost not in Baghdad or Najaf or Fallujah, but in Washington."

• Our Reptilian Brains, Victor Davis Hanson, May 28, 2004, on people's inability to stay the course, to be patient, to not panic with every setback. "A majority of Americans, like a majority of mankind, does not embrace a strong particular ideology that keeps them levelheaded and always resolute through either bad or good news. Most simply wish to win, and to be identified with a winner - they are as giddy with success as they are dejected with disappointment ... The truth is that for all our education, nuance, and professed idealism, too many of us think and act with our limbic systems, which are hard-wired to appreciate perceived success and feel comfortable with consensus. ... Our leaders should remember this volatility. In the long run, of course, the present strategy is sound and in a decade will be judged as such by historians. How could it not be sound to remove a mass murderer who posed a threat to the region and our country and then sponsor a consensual government in his place?"

• The Unwinnable War by Jeremy Brown, January 26, 2005 - The insurgency will fail because the Iraqi people don't want it. The "resistance" are doomed, they are dying for nothing, and they should give up now.

• Top 11 Iraqi War Myths

The war in historical context

• Noemie Emery, October 25, 2004, on persisting, on staying the course. Is a thousand American deaths too much in Iraq? Should America give up now?
  • Bush may have made some errors, but "His missteps in Iraq are about par for the course for the start of a big, serious war against vicious opponents, under conditions not quite seen before."
  • She reminds us of the Allied disasters of World War Two (and indeed, any war). "in a training exercise days before D-Day, British and American forces lost nearly as many forces as have already died in Iraq to mistakes and confusion. Churchill and Roosevelt did not apologize, nor did their generals. Nobody stateside complained."

• US soldiers killed per year:
  • World War Two - 100,000 / year
  • Korea - 20,000 / year
  • Vietnam - 5,000 / year
  • Iraq - 750 / year (actually 600 / year (from here) in combat, the rest in accidents etc.)

• The Vietnam War had a draft, and had almost 10 times the kill rate of Iraq (which rather explains why opposition to the Vietnam War was much stronger than opposition to the Iraq War).
• In summary, the Iraq death rate would be an impossible dream to anybody who ever had to fight a major war before (appalling though it is that anyone at all has to die to defeat the jihad).

• As for Afghanistan, far from being the "quagmire" that was predicted, the War on Afghanistan hardly seems to count as a war at all, by historical terms:
• US soldiers killed per year:
  • Afghanistan - 60 / year (actually 30 / year in combat, the rest in accidents etc.)

• Another interesting comparison is with the other "western" power to fight the jihad:
• Russian soldiers killed per year:
  • Afghanistan - 1,500 / year
  • First Chechen War - 3,000 / year
  • Second Chechen War - 3,000 / year

• The jihad is not undefeatable. It can and will lose. The jihad won in Afghanistan against the Russians, but lost in Afghanistan against the US, lost in Chechnya, and the jihad will lose in Iraq - not least because the Iraqi people don't support it. It is tragic that any brave American has to die to stop the Iraq jihad. But it cannot be stopped by any other means.

• Richard Waghorne on the 2,000th US death in Iraq (or via here) and the sneers of the left as they hope to bring the troops home in failure and thus make their sacrifice a waste. "What marks out much criticism of the Iraq War as singularly objectionable is the spirit in which it is offered. The disdain and sneering tone of a shockingly large section of the anti-war lobby ... is directly relevant. If critics believe that Iraq is lost, that counsel should be offered in sorrow, not in triumph. There are no winners if that judgment proves correct, none bar al-Qaeda and their allies. If critics believe that there was not warrant to intervene, that argument should be made with due respect for the nobility of the ideal attempted and the commitment of the fallen. The 2,000 are not a rhetorical device. They are 2,000 volunteers in the service of freedom half-away around the world. The war in Iraq is not lost, but something crucial to the health of free societies is perhaps in large part lost - respect for the valour of those who serve, commitment to those elsewhere striving to create a free society ... and a collective willingness to make the sacrifices freedom entails."

• Iraq Coalition Casualty Count
  • U.S. troops death rate during the brief war to depose Saddam in 2003 - 1500/year.
  • U.S. troops death rate since the war - between 1000/year and (now) 750/year.

  • Brave Iraqi allied troops and police fighting for democracy (the real "freedom fighters" in Iraq) - 3500/year (3500 dead in 2005).
  • For comparison, U.S. troops had 850 dead in 2005. The brave Iraqi democrats are fighting for their country, dying at a rate 4 times the U.S. troops.

• Service in Iraq: Just How Risky?, August 26, 2006.
  • Death rate of military personnel in Iraq, 2003-6: 3.92 deaths per 1000 people per year.
  • Death rate of U.S. population as a whole is, amazingly, higher: 8.42 deaths per 1000 people per year. But that includes the elderly, etc.
  • Death rate for U.S. men age 18 to 39 is lower (one should hope so!): 1.53 deaths per 1000 people per year.
  • Death rate for African American men age 20 to 34 in Philadelphia is, unbelievably, higher: 4.37 deaths per 1000 people per year. For a young black man in Philadelphia, it is safer to go to Iraq than to stay at home.
  • For comparison, death rate in Vietnam: 21.95 deaths per 1000 people per year.

• Being US President is riskier than serving in a major war:
  • Death rate for US Presidents = 100 percent (1000 deaths per 1000 people) in 1841, 1850, 1865, 1881, 1901, 1923, 1945, 1963, and 0 percent (0 deaths per 1000 people) in all other years since 1789.
  • For all of 1789-2008, that's a death rate of: 36.53 deaths per 1000 people per year.
  • More recently, for 1945-2008, the death rate is: 31.75 deaths per 1000 people per year.
  • American political assassinations
  • The assassination of JFK

How to win in Iraq II - "Go wide" (destroy the militias, hurt Iran and Syria)

As long as these hostile enemies can kill, and fund and arm killers, in Iraq with impunity, the violence will never end.

Destroy the militias

• Muqtada al-Sadr, and the sectarian Shia militias

• Iran, Hezbollah support al-Sadr, April 07, 2004 - Iran understands the threat that a free, democratic Iraq would pose to their tyranny. - "Iran does not want a success in Iraq. A democratic Iraq is a death knell to the mullahs."

• KILL MUQTADA NOW, Ralph Peters, October 26, 2006.
  • Ralph Peters expresses my thoughts exactly. He's telling Bush how to win, but Bush won't listen.
  • Bush did not kill Muqtada al-Sadr when he first emerged in 2003, and now he's got a war of sectarian death squads as a result. It's not too late to kill Muqtada.
  • "Iraq deserves one last chance. But to make that chance even remotely viable, we'll have to take desperate measures. We need to fight. And accept the consequences. The first thing we need to do is to kill Muqtada al-Sadr, who's now a greater threat to our strategic goals than Osama bin Laden. We should've killed him in 2003, when he first embarked upon his murder campaign. But our leaders were afraid of provoking riots. Back then, the tumult might've lasted a week. Now we'll face a serious uprising. So be it. When you put off paying war's price, you pay compound interest in blood."
  • "We must kill - not capture - Muqtada, then kill every gunman who comes out in the streets to avenge him. Our policy of all-carrots-no-sticks has failed miserably. We delivered Iraq to zealots, gangsters and terrorists. Now our only hope is to prove that we mean business - that the era of peace, love and wasting American lives is over. And after we've killed Muqtada and destroyed his Mahdi Army, we need to go after the Sunni insurgents. If we can't leave a democracy behind, we should at least leave the corpses of our enemies. The holier-than-thou response to this proposal is predictable: "We can't kill our way out of this situation!" Well, boo-hoo. Friendly persuasion and billions of dollars haven't done the job. Give therapeutic violence a chance. ... There's still a chance, if a slight one, that we can achieve a few of our goals in Iraq - if we let our troops make war, not love. But if our own leaders are unwilling to fight, it's time to leave and let Iraqis fight each other. Our president owes Iraq's treacherous prime minister nothing. Get tough, or get out."

• Arabian Nightmares, Ralph Peters, November 15, 2006. - Ignore the Iraqi government. Kill the militias now. "That means killing the bad guys. Not winning their hearts and minds, placating them or bringing them into the government. Killing them. If you're not willing to lay down a rule that any Iraqi or foreign terrorist masquerading as a security official or military member will be shot, you can't win. ... If we want to give Iraq's silent - and terrified - majority a last chance, we would have to accept the world's condemnation for killing the killers. If we are unwilling to do that, Iraq's finished."

Hurt Iran and Syria

Making Iran and Syria pay a price for stoking the violence in Iraq need not mean full-scale war, invasion and regime change. All that needs to be done is to hurt them hard to make them think again about this fight. Put them on the defensive. Bomb cross-border training camps. Sink their ships. Help Israel bomb Iran's nuclear weapons program. Destroy Hezbollah, and support the Lebanon democratic revolution. Put Iran and Syria on the defensive again, as they were in 2003, and press their regimes to the wall.

• Iran and Syria's support for the Iraqi resistance

• Iran and Syria next

• The Road to Victory Goes Through Tehran by Robert W. Tracinski (May 20, 2003). - "President Bush called the military victory in Iraq "the turning of the tide" in the War on Terrorism. That may be true, but the tide won't stay with us - or carry us to victory - until we are willing to take the war to Tehran and topple the most important material and ideological supporter of Islamic terrorism."
• The war against terror can be won only if we have the will, by Michael Ledeen, 20 Aug 2003 - The Islamofascists of Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia are at war with: "anyone who tries to make Iraq a free and successful country. The terror masters know that they would not survive successful democratic revolution on their doorsteps, because their own people would demand their own freedom."
• Wider War by Ralph Peters, 9 Apr 2004 - "Iran and Syria are at war with the United States. In Iraq. Now. Washington refuses to admit it." "Iran, Syria and al Qaeda share one common goal: Preventing the emergence of a free Iraq. They want to stop democracy and social liberty dead in their tracks. And they're willing to throw in all their reserves to do it."

• The Iran We Cannot Avoid, Michael Ledeen, January 2, 2007 - "We cannot 'solve' the Iraqi problem without regime change in Iran. ... We are in a big war, and we cannot fight it by playing defense in Iraq. That is a sucker's game. ... In passing, it follows from this that the entire debate over more or less troops in Iraq, surge or no surge, Baghdad or Anbar Province, all of it begs the central question. As long as Iran and their appendage in Damascus have a free shot at us, all these stratagems are doomed."
• To Win in Baghdad, Strike at Tehran, Robert Tracinski, January 04, 2007 - "An internal Pentagon review of the war, requested by Bush as part of his attempt to sidestep the Iraq Study Group, has considered three options: "go big," "go long," or "go home." ... But there is another, far more effective option: go wide. Going wide means recognizing that Iraq is just one front in a regional war against an Islamist Axis centered in Iran - and we cannot win that war without confronting the enemy directly, outside of Iraq."
• The war against the free world, Melanie Phillips, January 5, 2007 - "In order to win in Iraq, it is essential to defeat Iran. ... I have never understood how anyone could think that you can win a war by refusing to fight the aggressors and instead running around trying vainly to put out the fires they are starting."

• US cross-border raid on Syria, Oct 2008.

Ralph Peters' rules for victory

• Beyond Terror, Ralph Peters, 2003
  • Ch.2: "When Devils Walk the Earth: The Mentality and Roots of Terrorism, and How to Respond",
    • Section 3. Fighting Terror: Do's and Don'ts for a Superpower - 25 Rules for the War.

• The Bush administration would do well to re-read these rules. The clarity and strength they had in 2001-3 needs to be recovered.
• These rules also apply to Israel and its fight for survival.

• Some of the rules:
  • 2. "Identify the type of terrorists you face ... "Apocalyptic" terrorists, no matter their rhetoric, seek your destruction and must be killed to the last man. The apt metaphor is "cancer"; you cannot hope for success if you only cut out part of the tumor."
  • 3. "Do not be afraid to be powerful. ... Our great strengths are wealth and raw power. When we fail to bring those strengths to bear, we contribute to our own defeat. For a superpower to "think small," which has been our habit in the last decade (at least), is self-defeating folly. Our responses to terrorist acts should make the world gasp!"
  • 9. "When in doubt, hit harder than you think necessary. Success will be forgiven. Even the best-intentioned failure will not."
  • 10. "Whenever legal conditions permit, kill terrorists on the spot (do not give them a chance to surrender, if you can help it)."
  • 14. "Do not allow third parties to broker a peace, a truce, or any pause in operations."
  • 17. "Whenever possible, humiliate your enemy in the eyes of his own people. Do not try to use reasonable arguments against him. Shame him publicly, in any way you can. Create doubt where you cannot excite support. Most apocalyptic terrorists, especially, come from cultures of male vanity. Disgrace them at every opportunity."
  • 20. "Never declare victory."
  • 22. "Do everything possible to make terrorists and their active supporters live in terror themselves. ... Do not be distracted by the baggage of the term "assassination." This is a war. The enemy, whether a hijacker or a financier, violates the laws of war by his refusal to wear a uniform and by purposely targeting civilians. He is, by definition, a war criminal. On our soil, he is either a spy or a saboteur, and not entitled to the protections of the U.S. Constitution. Those who abet terrorists must grow afraid to turn out the lights and go to sleep."

• Lunch in the White House with George, Irwin Stelzer, The Sunday Times, March 4, 2007. Lists Andrew Roberts' lessons of history for the modern conflict:
  1. Do not set a deadline for withdrawal from Iraq.
  2. Will trumps wealth.
  3. Don't hesitate to intern your enemies for long periods.
  4. Cling to the alliance of the English-speaking peoples.

• 12 Myths of 21st-Century War, Ralph Peters, November 2007 - "Unaware of the cost of freedom and served by leaders without military expertise, Americans have started to believe whatever's comfortable" His myths include:
  1. Myth: War doesn't change anything. "Our enemies believe that war can change the world. And they won't be deterred by bumper stickers."
  2. Myth: Victory is impossible today. "victory looked a great deal less likely in the early months of 1942 than it does against our enemies today."
  3. Myth: Insurgencies can never be defeated. "Historically, fewer than one in 20 major insurgencies succeeded."
  4. Myth: There's no military solution; only negotiations can solve our problems. "It would be a welcome development if negotiations fixed the problems we face in Iraq, but we're the only side interested in a negotiated solution. Every other faction - the terrorists, Sunni insurgents, Shia militias, Iran and Syria - is convinced it can win."
  5. Myth: When we fight back, we only provoke our enemies.
  6. Myth: Killing terrorists only turns them into martyrs. "Zarqawi's dead and forgotten by his own movement, whose members never invoke that butcher's memory. And no one is fighting to avenge Saddam. The harsh truth is that when faced with true fanatics, killing them is the only way to end their influence."
  7. Myth: The United States is more hated today than ever before.
  8. Myth: If we just leave, the Iraqis will patch up their differences on their own. "The point may come at which we have to accept that Iraqis are so determined to destroy their own future that there's nothing more we can do. But we're not there yet, and leaving immediately would guarantee not just one massacre but a series of slaughters and the delivery of a massive victory to the forces of terrorism."
  9. Myth: The Saudis are our friends. "Saudi extremism has done far more damage to the Middle East than Israel ever did. The Saudis are our enemies."
  10. Myth: The Middle East's problems are all America's fault. "The collapse of once great Middle Eastern civilizations has been under way for more than five centuries, and the region became a backwater before the United States became a country."

Is victory coming?

• Is victory coming?
  1. The 2007 "troops surge" - the US shows it's not going to give up.
  2. Muqtada al-Sadr goes quiet as he tries to stay alive.
  3. The "Anbar Awakening" - the Sunni slow learners finally realise that Al Qaeda is their enemy.
  4. The liberation of Ramadi
  5. What I see every day in Iraq: locals turning against the insurgents, Michael Totten, December 2nd 2007, on the clearing of the jihadis from Fallujah. "Not one Marine from the 3rd Battalion, 5th Regiment has even been wounded since they rotated into the city two months ago. ... No insurgent can plant an IED without getting turned in by war-weary civilians. ... Fallujah was once the backbone of the insurgency. Today, .. "They avoid Fallujah now like it's the plague. ... They're afraid of the Iraqis." ... Another Iraqi who works as a money changer told me, "They are finished. It will be a shame on all of us if the terrorists ever come back." "
  6. Bin Laden worried about Iraq situation: "In closing, I tell our people in Iraq, the patient ones garrisoned on the first line of the religion and sanctities of the Muslims: the malice has increased and the darkness has become pitch black"
  7. Al Qaeda in Iraq documents, captured November 2007, describe a large number of fighters deserting their cause to join the Sunni tribes. "There are very few tribe members who stood by us". One document "describes an Al Qaeda in crisis, with citizens growing weary of militants' presence and foreign fighters too eager to participate in suicide missions rather than continuing to fight". "We lost cities and afterward, villages ... We find ourselves in a wasteland desert."
  8. Sharp drop in suicide bombings in late 2007
  9. Al Qaeda routed out of Baghdad
  10. "Al Qaeda in Iraq is defeated" (and here). "the military agrees but is understandably paranoid about declaring victory over AQI prematurely".
  11. Is Iraq getting better?, 11 November 2007. "There is no part of Baghdad in which al-Qaeda has a stronghold any more". On the Mehdi Army: "Many of the leaders have been arrested or killed by the Americans. Others have fled."
  12. Iraqis may finally be getting disillusioned with maniac religious killers. Quotes: "I hate Islam and all the clerics". "The religion men are liars. Young people don't believe them." "People have lost too much. They say to the clerics and the parties: You cost us this." "They have changed their views about religion. They started to hate religious men. They make jokes about them because they feel disgusted by them." "I used to love Osama bin Laden. .. Now I hate Islam." "The sheiks are making a society of nonbelievers."
  13. Its Own Worst Enemy: Al-Qaeda in Iraq's Islamo-puritanism sealed its doom, Deroy Murdock, July 15, 2008. "Rank-and-file Iraqis tasted life under bin Laden-style Islam, and they gagged. They responded by collaborating with American and Coalition forces to expel these mad zealots from their midst."
  14. Foreign fighters have become disillusioned with jihad in Iraq and have begun to exit the theater. "Foreign militants constitute about 10% of al-Qaeda's strength in Iraq, but .. a U.S. military spokesman in Iraq said they make up about 90% of the suicide bombers."
  15. Iraqi government finally takes on Al-Sadr's Shia militias.
  16. Charles Krauthammer lists the "Iraqi surge" of 2008 (the Iraqi government taking on all the militias).
  17. U.S. Ambassador to Iraq says Al-Qaida in Iraq has never been closer to defeat, May 2008. More here. Attacks have dropped to the lowest rate since 2004. As a comment puts it: "we better hurry up and unconditionally retreat before we win".
  18. The CIA has declared that al-Qaeda is virtually defeated in Iraq, May 2008. In April, 75 Iraqi civilians, soldiers and police were killed, the lowest level since November 2004.
  19. Moqtada al-Sadr's sectarian Shia death squads destroyed. "Iraqi intelligence reports suggest the group's numbers have dwindled from around 50,000 to as few as 150 in the past few years. ... An Iraqi intelligence official reports as many as 2,000 Mehdi Army fighters were killed in recent operations in Basra, Sadr City and the provincial capital of Maysan, Amarah."
  20. Even Al Guardian thinks America may be winning in Iraq! June 2008. "Western intelligence agencies estimate that the number of foreign fighters is down to single figures each month. ... The Islamic State of Iraq claimed 334 operations in November 2006 but just 25 a year later. Attacks dropped from 292 in May 2007 to 16 by mid-May this year." As a comment says, America should keep it up, even escalate to finish them off: "The simple truth is this. When you kill enough of the people who were trying to kill you and yours then they stop trying to kill you and try to preserve what they have left. That's the way all successful wars end. Keep killing them, boys!"
  21. Michael Yon, 14 July 2008: "the war has ended. ... What's left is messy politics that likely will be punctuated by low-level violence and the occasional spectacular attack. Yet, the will of the Iraqi people has changed ... the Iraq War is over. We won."
  22. Michael J. Totten looks at the figures: All attacks are at their lowest level in 4 years. Civilian deaths are down almost 90 percent since the surge. High profile attacks are down by 80 percent in the same time period. American and Iraqi soldiers suffer far fewer casualties than they have for years. Ethno-sectarian deaths from Iraq's civil war plunged to zero in May and June 2008.
  23. Brian Glyn Williams, July 21, 2008, on how the jihadis are giving up on Iraq and moving on to other fronts: "The Anbar Awakening really broke the hearts of a lot of al-Qaeda followers who saw the jihad in Iraq in black-and-white terms. Sunni Arab al-Qaeda were pushed out by fellow Sunni Arabs. Iraq is seen as a defeat. The image of Afghanistan is seen as a more pristine jihad."
  24. Leaders of Al Qaeda in Iraq reported as fleeing Iraq, July 2008. They are fleeing to Pakistan and Afghanistan. "We do believe al-Qaida is doing some measure of re-assessment regarding the continued viability of its fight in Iraq and whether Iraq should remain the focus of its efforts." Looks like they're giving up.
  25. Al-Sadr reported as giving up, Aug 2008.

• These may be the early signs of victory, of a devastating, humiliating defeat for the global jihad. If so, the world should celebrate it. The jihad must be humiliated. We must point out that tens of thousands of jihadi idiots gave their lives for nothing. They killed innocents for nothing. They could have had families and happy lives. But instead they threw away their young lives for an ideology of hatred that was going nowhere. The jihad must be humiliated. It must look like yesterday's revolution, like an old idea. And then young men will think twice before joining a losing cause.
• And if victory comes, if democracy comes to Iraq, then the Iranian revolution will end, and there will be hope at last for the Middle East.

• Operation Phantom Strike: How the U.S. military is demolishing al Qaeda in Iraq, Mario Loyola, 3 Sept 2007, claims that Al Qaeda in Iraq are losing: "Al Qaeda in Iraq had many initial advantages - including a message that, though false, was superficially appealing. But they never achieved national scope. They have never looked to anyone like they could actually govern a country. They never gained the open support of any foreign army. And now, after giving the people of Iraq a taste of their brutal sadism - after executing children for playing with American-donated soccer balls, after chopping the fingers off young men for smoking, after murdering entire families in front of the youngest son, so he would live to tell the tale - Al Qaeda in Iraq is more widely hated than feared. In the words of one soft-spoken coalition planner in Baghdad, "We are demolishing them." After four long years, the coalition has finally grasped the keys to victory. Al Qaeda has begun to lose the staging areas it needs for attacks in Baghdad. Just staying alive and avoiding capture is becoming a full-time occupation for them."

• How we've won the war in Iraq, Bartle Bull, The Sunday Times, September 30, 2007
  • The justice of the cause: "By any normal ethical standard, the coalition's current project in Iraq is a just one. Britain, America and Iraq's other allies are there as the guests of an elected government given a huge mandate by Iraqi voters under a legitimate constitution. The United Nations approved the coalition's role in May 2003 and the mandate has been renewed annually since then, most recently this August. Meanwhile, the other side in this war are among the worst people in global politics: Ba'athists, the Nazis of the Middle East; Sunni fundamentalists, the chief opponents of progress in Islam's struggle with modernity; and the government of Iran. Ethically, causes do not come much clearer than this one."
  • But not only is the cause just. He also argues that the war is being won, and the enemy is failing.

• Leader of the Anbar Awakening offers his help in effort against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. He says: "Al Qaeda is an ideology. We can defeat them inside Iraq and we can defeat them in any country." On Bush he said: "He is a brave man. He is also a wise man. He is taking care of the country's future, the United States' future. He is also taking care of the Iraqi people, the ordinary people in Iraq."

• Iraqis lead final purge of Al-Qaeda, The Sunday Times, July 6, 2008. And more.
  • "1,200 fighters [remain] from a terrorist force once estimated at more than 12,000" "The overall number of attacks in Iraq has fallen by 80% in the past year alone."
  • The comments to the first article above are worth reading. All-out war between the lefties sneering at this victory and those on the right who celebrate it and the allied troops and political leadership that made it happen.
  • Comments point out that thousands of jihadis are dead and there have been no major attacks in the US since 2001. "we drew them to the killing fields of Iraq and they fell for the invite." Another: "So, while the war has had its problems, it did effectively bring the nut jobs into one concentrated location, so we could mow them down. And, likely discouraging many others from bothering to become terrorists".
  • Could this be true: "As an army man and a master of history I will say that the invasion of Iraq will be viewed in the future as one of the greatest strategic moves of all time. You took a disperse enemy and got him to mass his forces in one spot."
  • And one states the obvious (yet so rarely heard): Even if the US made some errors, "Why do we blame the Americans? Did they ask Al Qaeda to enter Iraq ... supply them weapons? There is no moral symmetry. It's the Al Qaeda Muslim Jihadist that are making war." Exactly. Blame the jihadi scum, not Bush. This war since 2003 was their idea, not his.
  • Hot Air: "AQ has sustained an unmitigated defeat in Iraq. They have lost tens of thousands of recruits and fighters, men that would have otherwise volunteered for other missions in which they didn't have to face the American military."

• Victor Davis Hanson, March 14, 2008, on whether the Iraq War has made us safer: "Rarely in American history has a war been so often spun, praised, renounced, disowned, and finally neglected. And the result is that a number of questions remain not just unanswered, but unasked. We have not been hit since 9/11, despite the dire predictions from almost everyone of serial attacks to come. ... What is never discussed is how many Islamists flocked to Iraq, determined to defeat the U.S. military - and never got out alive. Or, more bluntly, how many jihadists did the U.S. Army and Marines kill in Iraq rather than in Manhattan? And what was the effect of that defeat not only on the jihadists, but also on those who were watching carefully to see whether the terrorists should be joined in victory or abandoned in defeat? Who really took his eye off the ball - the United States by going into Iraq, as alleged, or Osama bin Laden and his jihadist lieutenants by diverting thousands there to their deaths, as is never mentioned? ... Again, whereas the conventional wisdom holds that we have radicalized an entire generation of young Muslims, it may turn out instead that we have convinced a generation that it is not wise after 9/11 to wage war against the United States."
• Victor Davis Hanson, July 28th, 2008, on the history of American wars: "None of this volatility is new in American military history. The American Revolutionary War ebbed and flowed for nine years, variously pronounced won, lost, and won again. The Union thought it had won, then had lost, and finally won the Civil War during the last 16 months of the conflict. ... No war was more mercurial than the Korean between 1950-53, in which the American public was convinced the war was hopeless before it ended in 1953 with the preservation of South Korea. In most of these struggles, the efforts of just a few rare individuals — a Washington, Grant, Sherman, Ridgway — proved crucial. We remember their names, not the thousands of pundits who declared them incompetent and their wars lost. Long after a Seymour Hersh, Moveon.org, Code Pink, Cindy Sheehan, Harry Reid and others are forgotten, Americans will still remember what David Petraeus did for our country."