After keeping their distance for months, Iraqis in the Sunni triangle city of Samarra suddenly began cooperating with U.S. troops, leading them to insurgents and hidden weapons caches. Tips went way up, attacks went way down, and the Americans soon went elsewhere after putting Iraqi units in charge. The catalyst: anger over a local tribal chief's assassination by Islamist death squads.
This has been a recurring pattern throughout Iraq, and indeed throughout the war generally.
Don't they know that killing prominent loyalists just spawns resentment, and creates more loyalists to plague them? This is what happens when you behead the diversity consultants on film, people, and start disrespecting other peoples' contextual social construct narratives. I eagerly await the al-Qaeda inquest into the poor planning and hubris that allowed this catastrophe (and so many others) to happen.
We don't have to be perfect to win - we just have to be better than our enemies. That's the way it has always been throughout history. And I'll say it yet again: the intrinsic nature of our enemies remains our greatest saving grace in this war.
But Buttt BBButtt Murtha and the imbeded Times reporter trumpeted by CNN as in the know say that the terrorist are inumerable and unbeatable perfect they dont make mistakes. It is hopeless we cant ever and dont ever make any progress against the terrorist everytime we kill one 10form everytime we take a city 10fall.
sheeesh everyone knows that once you go anti-american you are unbeatable supermen only those who support the evil capatilist imperialist Big Satan are the real cowards and hopeless invelents.
>>We don't have to be perfect to win - we just have to be better than our enemies.
And the better we are, the faster we win.
>>And I'll say it yet again: the intrinsic nature of our enemies remains our greatest saving grace in this war.
Not so. If our enemies were intrinsically good, didn't engage in the murder of innocents, tyranny, etc., we would be much better off (as would they).
The better our enemies are, the faster we win.
T.J. is sort of right - the better people our enemies become, the faster we win.
But given that I no more expect them to cease their interest in hatred, tyranny, the murder of innocents, et. al. than I expect T.J. to suddenly become a communist and appear on public TV commercials urging his fellow citizens to voluntarily send money to the government over and above their overly-modest taxes... well, then, we're the one's who need to be more proficient than our enemies.
If we're more proficient, maybe their children will be better - and maybe their better neighbours and acquaintances can take charge along the way.
The tighter they close thier fist, the more cities will slip through thier fingers.
Evil cannot triumph over good because it is the nature of evil to destroy itself.
A strong rule of the Bene Gesserit Coda is this:
Never support weakness; always support strength.
The problem of Al-Qaeda is that their weakness is also their strength. A distributed network of autonomous cells is hard to root out and destroy, but also difficult to control and to shape into a winning strategy. This is also complicated by the bloodlust ingrained by centuries of tribal warfare that demands instant gratification.
Joe, obviously you don't understand the big picture. Don't you know that around every silver lining there is a dark cloud? In fact, the reports from Samarra are further proof that we are losing the war. Really.
Howard Dean says we can't win and have to run away (I mean withdraw to a safe place) immediately. After that he posed with Code Pink who sent $600,000 to terrorists in Fallujah fighting our troops.
That's the political discourse from Democrats.
Can I question their patriotism NOW?
uh, guys, there IS a cloud to this silver lining. The sheik who was friendly to us is dead. I mean its great that the tribals decided to get mad at AQ and not just submit - at least for now - but in the long run its NOT a good thing for us that Sunni leaders who are friendly to us get popped off. Just as its not good for AQ when their leaders get killed by us and our friends. We'll be WINNING in Iraq when its SAFE for a tribal leader to be anti-AQ, wherever in Iraq he lives. We're a long way from that. Its good that an AQ victory causes anti-AQ blowback, but its hardly cause for complacency.