Continuous Progress in Iraq

In my continuing effort to counter the "we're losing the war" meme--which is nothing more than a rhetorical tactic to distort reality through the emphasis of bad news and the de-emphasis on the good, the creation of false and impossible expectations, with a stronger credibility given to those who's goals are only intended not to enlighten or solve problems, but to critize--I present you the latest piece of defeatist agitprop from Paul McGeough:

THE masked gunman cradles a sniper's rifle as he sits in the back of a car. Speaking to the camera, he taunts the US President with a chilling outline of his planned mission: "I'm going to give George Bush a small present. I have nine bullets - with each I'll shoot someone and, before your eyes, I'll give the present to Bush."

Alighting in a built-up area, he heads over rough ground to the corner of a building. The camera rolls as he cocks the Tabuk rifle - a Saddam Hussein take-off of the Russian-designed Dragunov.

The recording then cuts to a tightly spliced sequence of nine shootings, in which the targets appear to be members of the American or Iraqi security forces.

It is pure and brutal propaganda. Some of the images are blurred and there is no proof that the man with the gun has even fired the shots.

Each target seems to collapse as a single shot is heard, but there is no attempt to verify the gunman's claim that he has killed the victim.

Nonetheless, this and three other video CDs gathered recently by the Herald in Sunni communities near Baghdad are graphic indications of the extent to which an emboldened insurgency has dug in, arming itself with high-tech propaganda as well as low-tech weaponry.

Recorded over the past two years, the videos suggest that the rebel fighters have a remarkable ease of movement in urban and rural Iraq and an ability to acquire the weapons and uniforms of the new Iraqi security forces.

They show too their skill in crafting crude homemade missile launchers and improvised bombs for use in brazen daylight attackson military, political and economic targets.

As the third anniversary of the invasion of Iraq (March 20) looms, they underscore the daunting challenge that still confronts US and Iraqi security forces as they attempt to execute the counterinsurgency orders of the US Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, to "drain the swamp".

When told of the content of the CDs obtained by the Herald, one of America's leading terrorism analysts, Bruce Hoffman of the Rand Corp, said the insurgency was not just entrenched, but was now self-perpetuating.

The purpose of my counter-argument is not to deny the horrible realities of the story above. Bad news is a large part of war, and snipers picking off soliders from a rooftop or killing Iraqis going to work, is indeed horrible. But, McGeough's article uses a piece of enemy propaganda (which he fully admits it is) to portray these events as yet another example of failure by the leadership of the United States to effectively win the war. His myopic piece stands in stark contrast to the big picture, where al-Qaeda, the insurgent group responsible for the bloodiest and most deadly attacks in Iraq over the past three years, is now being actively resisted not only by the portion of the Iraqi population loyal to the newly elected government, but also by the insurgent groups who were allied with them against the Americans during the beginning of the resistence.

The bad news is, of course, that Iraq is still an extremely dangerous place. More so than American soldiers, Iraqi citizens are routinely murdered in an effort to a) terrorize them, b) gain more recruits through their resistence to the infidels, and c) equalize the strategic disadvantage they have to the democratic elements who have yet to miss a single strategic objective since the initial invasion.

The American efforts to reclaim their strategic advantage began with the retaking of the insurgent stronghold in Fallujah. U.S. forces destroyed their main hub and continued to chase the insurgents through the Euphrates River Valley into Syria. As residents realized that U.S. forces were not going to pull-out and allow the insurgents to reclaim their old territory, intelligence and tips started to trickle in about the insurgency.

In the background, Iraq security forces continued their training and began to join U.S. forces on raids while also providing much needed man-power in holding territory reclaimed. Tactically, the Americans were able to leverage their Iraqi allies in clearing and removing insurgents from the politically sensitive mosques. But the Iraqi forces were establishing a long-term footprint by providing legitimacy as a home-grown element to the largely American operations.

The Americans continued to cut off the insurgency from their life-lines (or rat-lines) along the Euphrates. The Anbar Campaign, which I claim history will demonstrate was one of the mostly widely successful military operations ever, attacked insurgents in their strongholds along the Euphrates. But, as the green Iraqi troops who fought limitedly during the first phase, began to increase their presence and were taking more and more initiative with every operation. Not only were the rat-lines being cut off, but the Iraqi troops were starting to win engagements against their foes.

Al-Qaeda responded. They attacked soft targets: women and children. Even the Sunni insurgent groups didn't have the stomach for this and actively told al-Qaeda to back-off. They didn't, so the insurgency which the media is so fond of portraying a single entity, ferociously went after each other.

McGeough does close his piece with a truism from a counter-terrorism analyst:

Noting official Iraqi and US responses to fluctuations in data, he says: "It's easy to claim a trend towards 'victory', but … far more difficult to make them enduring or valid. Equally, it is easy to talk about 'tipping points' or 'turning points', but most such claims are wrong, oversimplified and/or premature.

"Real patterns take time to emerge and insurgencies are filled with cycles in which the patterns of a given day, week or month are reversed and later, reversed again."

In his latest report, Bill Roggio demonstrates which direction this pattern is headed:

Further details emerge about the developing rifts between the native elements of the Iraqi insurgency and al-Qaeda and their Islamist allies. Army Major General Rick Lynch, the spokesman for Multinational Force Iraq, acknowledged the infighting has occurred in Anbar province; “Many times these citizens are urged by their local tribal leaders to rid the area of the insurgent influence... In Fallujah and Ramadi, citizens have established checkpoints to keep insurgents out and six al Qaeda leaders have been killed in the area since September.”

According to Maj. Gen. Lynch, the increase in tips from over a year ago has skyrocketed by 240 times the number reported last year. The Department of Defense reports “Iraqi civilians provided more than 1,300 tips to coalition and Iraqi security forces... That is a huge improvement from the 47 tips received in January 2005... Of all the valid calls received by the Ministry of Interior's national tips hotline, 98 percent provided actionable intelligence... Most calls are about terrorist activity... but calls also come in about kidnapping, murder and other criminal activity.”

...The newly created Mujahedeen Shura Council, which is comprised of al-Qaeda in Iraq and six small Islamist groups (Victorious Army Group, the Army of al-Sunnah Wal Jama’a, Ansar al-Tawhid Brigades, Islamic Jihad Brigades, the Strangers Brigades, and the Horrors Brigades) has made yet another appeal for the insurgency to unite under its banner. So far there are no new takers.

Osama bin Laden once said “when people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature, they will like the strong horse.” Zarqawi is by no means defeated in Iraq, and can still muster the strength to commit acts of terror, but it seems clear at this point his horse is viewed more like a nag than a thoroughbred.

It is not my place to answer whether I think that Paul McGeough is writing from the standpoint of bad faith or just ignorance. Just the same, this type of reporting that tries to insinuate that "Iraq is just like Vietnam," instead of a messy battleground where the strategic advantage is heavily in favor of those supporting the new democracy, only serves to benefit the muderous thugs that continue to ruthlessly kill those who are trying to work towards rebuilding a country that now belongs not to a strongman, but to them. When the Iraqi people look back in fifty years, I hope they'll remember who provided the enemy a mouthpiece to spread fear throughout the world.