International Herald Tribune: "Over the past two years, the number of insurgent attacks against Iraqis and Americans has dropped by more than 90 percent. Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia has been severely degraded, if not crushed altogether, in large part because many local Sunnis, including former insurgents, have taken up arms against it.
Since February, as the security situation improved, U.S. commanders have cut the number of marines and soldiers operating in the province by 40 percent.
The transfer of authority codified a situation that Iraqi and American officers say has been in effect since April: The Iraqi Army and police operate independently and retain primary responsibility for battling the insurgency and crime in Anbar. The United States, which had long done the bulk of the fighting, has stepped into a backup role, going into the streets only when accompanied by Iraqi forces.
...
"Not in our wildest dreams could we have imagined this," said Mowaffak al-Rubaie, the Iraqi national security adviser, who flew in from Baghdad. "Two or three years ago, had we suggested that the Iraqis could take responsibility, we would have been ridiculed, we would have been laughed at. This was the cradle of the Sunni insurgency."
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What finally broke the stalemate, according to former insurgents and local leaders, was a local revolt against Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the radical insurgent group believed to be led primarily by foreigners. As the group began to expand its goals beyond killing Americans to include sectarian assassinations and imposing a fundamentalist Islam, local tribal leaders struck back and reached out for help to U.S. forces. The "Sunni Awakening" was born, and it soon spread across the Sunni areas of Iraq."
I believe the last paragraph is the most telling. It was a foreign led guerrilla war, not a domestic insurgency.
Notice this as well. The vaunted US army has once again left it's battlefield in victory, and we've handed it over to whom it belongs.
In other news, Palin seems like a good VP choice. It's brilliant politically, anyways.
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2 comments:
It scares me to be at the crossroads especially with two candidates up for office that I question. This is where McCain rises to the top for me though. It is not an easy position to take but I think we need to continue to pursue the foreign factions. I don't know how that will work. Pakistan just ousted a very weak President but he was about as pro-US as I can forsee. I am unsure what the coming months will show from their new leadership. This is scary to me since it seems like principle Taliban and Al Qaeda forces are holed up in the remote Pakistani mountains.
I think it would be a mistake to pull out of the region altogether and let the radical extremists continue to rebuild. This is what we have always done. Look at Afghanistan, we left a "stable", pro-West government that turned into one of the largest state-supported terrorist organizations in the world.
I am not seeking to be the "World Police" but I think there is more work to be done in fighting terrorism and supporting the peaceful majorities in this region.
You realize, my dear Robert, that this post -- especially the last paragraph -- will upset liberals and Democrats across the country. You're going to have them frothing and experiencing epileptic seizures of the left eye. They might well picket your house.
To actually wish that American troops would be victorious. The very idea!
Kidding aside, what I think especially delicious is that this news comes on the first day of Ramadan. Now is that a nyah-nyah, or is that a nyah-nyah?
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