On Monday 125 people were killed in Iraq by a car bomb. On Tuesday 2000 people filled the streets in protest at the bombing.
The insurgency is over. We're just seeing its dying twitches. They'll use up their money and arms caches, at least the ones we don't find first, and some more people may well die, as they did today. But the Coalition is not abandoning the Iraqi people to these murderous thugs and the Iraqis themselves have had it. When Iraqis take to the streets by the thousands to shout "No to terrorism!" it is clear they have delegitimized both the Ba'athists and the jihadis who are working to try to destabilize the nascent democracy there.
UPDATE: Gen. Abazaid says the insurgency is shrinking. Key quote:
Abizaid said improved Iraqi intelligence sources and "treason within his own organization" had lead to successes against Zarqawi.
Yup. When the fanatics start selling out their leaders the writing's on the wall ..... But we can't afford to be complacent - the violence may go on for a while yet. And once it's over there's still a lot of (re)construction work to do before Iraq is a stable, thriving country. But these are Good Signs.
Let's not forget, though, that the U.S. and Iraqi governments are six or seven months behind where they should be by now thanks to last summer's "Let's turn Samarra, Fallujah, Hit, etc. over to the Ba'athists and see how things work out" policy. Yay for progress against the Ba'athists, but there are folks in Washington who bear serious culpability for how bad the situation in Iraq deteriorated from April to September.
Well, it wouldn't have been my strategy either. OTOH there was significant pressure from the Iraqi interim government to do that. And I think the failure of that approach built stronger support for elections in January and for coming down hard on the insurgents now.
It's one of those compromises that come along with the strategic intent to have the Iraqis run their own country.
My guess is that the neo-Ba'athists and Iraqi salafists are selling out the foreigners. Just a hunch, though.
From today's SF Chronicle, an upbeat report on a US-Iraqi police operation in the Sunni zone. Progress, seemingly.
#3 So they want to deal with the Shiites in power. Guess what their main request will be? The one they know that will be honoured
Andrew Reeves: We turned away from Fallujah and the Sunni Triangle in the spring to deal with the rise of Muqtada al Sadr. In my opinion, we turned Fallujah over to the Ba'athists to send a signal to Ayatollah al Sistani -- don't let the Shia radicals get out of line, or we can cut a deal with the Sunnis. He got the picture, and al Sadr was fairly quickly -- within three months or so -- isolated from the Shia mainstream and boxed up. It may have been a bad idea to play that card, but I think our retreat from Fallujah in April was as much for the purpose of implicit bargaining with Sistani than military considerations.
As for the post, I agree that the insurgency is in strategic retreat. I think the most powerful evidence of this is the report of the recent order (or request) of bin Laden that al Zarqawi redirect his attacks at American targets outside of Iraq. Assuming the report is true, it is powerful evidence that bin Laden, at least, thinks that Iraq is lost to al Qaeda -- there will be no ejection of the coalition, and there will be no sectarian war. Otherwise, why divert resources to softer targets elsewhere?
The war is over in Iraq and the US has lost that one. The heavier the fighting now in Iraq the more difficult it will be to kick the Americans out. But the rest of the Middle East is open territory. See losing other countries as a given. But be happy, you can always spin it to people power.
ps. No sectarian war means that all those sunni's fought against the coalition and not against the shiite. That is not good news at all.
The piece by Robin Burk was posted in March 2005 when he said that insurgency was dying. This is Januray 2006. 40 people died yesterday in attacks and 118 today (including 5 US soldiers). Please reassure us again that the insurgency is dying.