Winning in Iraq news

by cactus

Newmark’s Door comments on news and Iraq:

More than a few people are noticing that we may be winning the war in Iraq, and that the consequences of victory will be large and far-reaching. Michael Yon, who’s observed Iraq, first-hand, a lot more closely than most U.S. journalists and politicians, believes that “We are winning because of who we are, and Al Qaeda is losing because of who they are.”

The Washington Post editorializes, “Don’t look now, but the U.S.-backed government and army may be winning the war.”

Abe Greenwald explains why this is important.

After years of telling us the war on terror was creating more terrorists, the mainstream media has mysteriously woken up to the fact that Islamic extremism is on the wane. Newsweek is the latest publication to run a support-for-jihad-is-fading piece…

cactus replies in comments:

In the mid-1990s, we had a domestic equivalent to Al Qaeda a few years back . We had the militia movement, that spawned the Oklahoma City bombing. Along the way, it got feted by a few Republican congresscritters from Idaho and Michigan, as I recall, but that’s another story.

High profile actions taken against any of these home grown low-budget terrorists and wanna-be terrorists, from Ruby Ridge to Waco, did only one thing: it made their message of a big bad gubmint out to put everyone in a UN run concentration camp look more credible, at least to nutjobs similar to the ones already involved in the militia movement. Which meant the whole thing grew until one of the those @$$holes blew up a building full of innocent people and killed a lot of people.

Even the exceptionally feeble-minded folks who voted for Helen Chenoweth began to understand there was a difference between the fantasy represented by all this talk about black helicopters and chips implanted in people’s foreheads and the reality of some crazies who would have no problem in killing them for no particular reason and attributing it to “collateral damage.” And then… the process very quickly flamed out. No race war, no uprising, no battles against the government’s minions in city streets, and most certainly no more support from the public. It helped, of course, that the government kept a relative low profile – no more surrounding compounds full of armed lunatics who would barbecue themselves at the whim of some wild-eyed prophet. Instead, they treated it like law enforcement. Would be martyrs were arrested, and not given the opportunity to go out in a blaze of “glory.”

End result – the rapid end of the militia movement, no more than about five years after just about anyone had ever heard of it. Total death toll not counting members of this traitorous movement – in the low hundreds.

Al Qaeda, like the militia movement, like the Red Brigades, like the PFLP, like the Weather Underground, like who knows how many other movements of disaffected sociopaths, will run its course. Its just a lot of people decided it would be clever to act in a way that ensured this movement would be around for that much longer, and cause that much more harm. But now, as was inevitable all along, History is reasserting herself.

And the folks who were wrong all along, the folks who gave us the corners that were turned over and over and over, who promised us a Surge was going to leave our pet klepto in charge of the entire country, the folks who talked about thieves and religious fanatics alternately as if they were pieces on a chessboard or friends of ours, the folks who gave these thieves and religious fanatics who hate us our money, the folks who told us about generational struggles, in short, the very folks who made the problem worse, who drove up the cost in blood and treasure and prestige and goodwill, are now declaring victory. Wow.

Posted by: cactus | June 11, 2008 at 07:58 PM

Rdan here:
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