The useful e-mail newsletter FYEO Express (available from The Strategy Page) headlines its lead item today "The Last Rebellion Against Saddam Begins", which is a more intelligible perspective on what is happening on the ground in Iraq than the major media's rote pessimism.
July 11, 2004: Things have calmed down in Iraq, as the Sunni Arab rebels begin to argue among themselves over tactics, and al Qaeda tries to deal with the popular anger over the car bombing campaign. The new interim government proved very popular among many Sunni Arabs, more popular than their Iraqi, Arab and European opponents expected. Now the Sunni Arab members of the government are negotiating with Sunni Arab tribal and religious leaders who have been supporting or tolerating the violence. The point of the negotiations, as always, is the prospect of civil war, and avoiding it.
So far, the "resistance" has been mostly Saddam's unemployed thugs shooting at American troops and Iraqi police, as well as terrorizing Iraqis working for the government. This has been a futile exercise, with more than ten dead Iraqis rebels for every American soldier or Iraqi policeman killed. Moreover, the rebel strategy to gain more recruits as a result of Iraqis killed by American attacks, has not worked. American firepower has been applied in a very disciplined way. While there were always enough dead civilians for the media to film, there were not enough to cause more people to take up arms against the government. The main point of these negotiations is that the interim government is growing stronger month by month. The Americans cannot be defeated militarily, or via exploitation of the media. Anyone who continues to fight, with the cooperation of Saddam's old secret police and thugs, and foreign terrorists, will never gain the support of the majority of Iraqis. And continued resistance will eventually trigger a major military response, which will cause massive destruction in Sunni Arab areas. The Sunni Arab leaders are in a tough situation, as the Saddam crew are not reluctant to use their old terror methods to keep everyone properly motivated. What the interim government is asking, is for Sunni Arabs to rebel against Saddam, and his thousands of gunmen who are still out there, and still killing those who resist them. It's a question of who do you fear more; Saddam's gunmen, or the forces representing over 80 percent of Iraqis, backed up by coalition troops. The Sunni Arab leadership are beginning to turn away from the terrorists, and it's going to be a bloody process.
Western reporters perceive the facts on which this analysis is based but are unable or unwilling to adjust their dhimmi-like presuppositions accordingly. Consider, for instance, a recent AP story ominously headlined "Iraq Insurgency Larger Than Thought". Its undisguised aim is to present the view of anonymous military analysts who say that the Saddamite remnants "cannot be militarily defeated". No doubt the writer talked to one or more U.S. personnel who believe that. Among a couple of hundred thousand American soldiers and civilians in Iraq, one can expect to find every conceivable opinion. I'm not surprised that an unnamed officer says of enemy leaders, "I generally like a lot of these guys." Whether such a one is the most credible evaluator of enemy capabilities and intentions is more doubtful.
Discounting the bias of its cherry-picked sources, the AP article essentially confirms FYEO Express's picture:
• The claim that the Saddamites "can call upon part-time fighters to boost forces to as high as 20,000" is intended to be alarming but is in fact the opposite. A force of that size, if motivated and well led, ought to be able to carry out a debilitating guerilla campaign and effectively control large tracts of territory. Instead, the enemy makes pinprick attacks from a safe distance, firing mortar rounds at fixed targets or setting bombs along the roads. Those tactics point to unwillingness to engage in combat, a sure sign of low morale. They also support the contention of Iraqi bloggers that much "rebel" activity is sustained by the Saddamite leaders' reserves of looted cash; they can hire mercenary temps to conduct low-risk operations but have very little real following.
• The story mentions that Coalition forces killed some 4,000 enemy fighters in April alone, a figure that our military commanders, still remembering the controversy over body counts in Vietnam, make no effort to publicize. The significance of that figure goes beyond attrition. Since the enemy rarely attempts direct attacks, the only way to kill them in large numbers is to take the offensive, hunting down and striking their strongholds. Our men seem to be carrying out that task superbly.
• Going against its downbeat thrust, the story confirms that Iraqis are by and large assisting, rather than hindering, that anti-Saddamite drive:
Even as Iraqi leaders wrangle over the contentious issue of offering a broad amnesty to guerrilla fighters, the new Iraqi military and intelligence corps have begun gathering and sharing information on the insurgents with the U.S. military, providing a sharper picture of a complex insurgency.
"Nobody knows about Iraqis and all the subtleties in culture, appearance, religion and so forth better than Iraqis themselves," said U.S. Army Lt. Col. Daniel Baggio, a military spokesman at Multinational Corps headquarters in Baghdad. "We're very optimistic about the Iraqis' use of their own human intelligence to help root out these insurgents."
The intelligence boost has allowed American pilots to bomb suspected insurgent safe houses over the past two weeks, with Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi saying Iraqis supplied information for at least one of those airstrikes.
In a large country with a long tradition of endemic violence, pacification will take a long time, but the forecasts of those who call Iraq a "quagmire" steadily look less attuned to reality. The same people jabbered about how Coalition forces were "bogged down" after the first week of the invasion. It's time to start paying less attention to their wishful hopes for Western humiliation.
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