Now "Operation Lightning Hammer" is also "successful", because Al-Qaeda is again "on the run". It's also "successful" because we have employed terrorist groups to wipe out terrorists. Yes, it seems odd that, in our virtuous battle to free Iraq from terrorists, we have joined up with groups which not only have attacked and killed our troops, but also have abducted, tortured, executed, and held many, many innocents for ransom. But these are "good terrorists". I don't remember Bush mentioning this distinction in his Jan. 10 speech proposing the surge. Actually, he has pretty much blurred the terms "terrorists", "insurgents", and "Al-Qaeda" together non-stop, so nobody really knows what he means:
The violence in Iraq — particularly in Baghdad — overwhelmed the political gains the Iraqis had made. Al Qaeda terrorists and Sunni insurgents recognized the mortal danger that Iraq's elections posed for their cause, and they responded with outrageous acts of murder aimed at innocent Iraqis. They blew up one of the holiest shrines in Shia Islam — the Golden Mosque of Samarra — in a calculated effort to provoke Iraq's Shia population to retaliate. Their strategy worked. Radical Shia elements, some supported by Iran, formed death squads. And the result was a vicious cycle of sectarian violence that continues today.
So it sounds like "insurgents" are the bad guys, doesn't it? Well, that's only those "insurgents" who haven't vowed to "unite in their fight against terrorists and become one tribe of Diyala", as the article quotes the military as saying. So these people that Bush called terrorists are going to fight against terrorists. And they took a vow, after all.
Al-Qaeda is so "desperate" and "on the run", in fact, that 200 of their number killed one of the "good terrorist" leaders, along with his sons on Friday. And since they didn't stick around and wait to be killed, Col. Sutherland counts this as a success. They're "on the run" again.
I would hazard a guess that if a mugger beat you bloody and took your week's pay, that you would not consider it a "success" because he failed to hang around and take on the police. You would probably not consider the mugger moving on to victimise others somewhere else as a positive sign that the mugger is now "desperate", either. Yet, in the case of Iraq the Bush Administration feels free to make up definitions as they go along, and if you don't accept them unquestioningly then you "support the terrorists". The bad terrorists, not the "good terrorists". Please try to keep up.
So now that we know we are "winning", you can easily see that yet another attack on the Green Zone is also something positive. The attackers didn't mill about waiting for our troops to arrive, did they? See, they are "on the run".
Likewise, the assassination of Khalid Othman is another "success" because his killers didn't make camp on the crime scene, but instead ran away. They were "desperate". Another roadside bomb in Baghdad, where the surge is focused, killed a civilian. Iraqis now know they are secure, because they will only be killed by people who run away afterward. The day before, one our soldiers was killed by a roadside bomb in Baghdad, which is not sounding very "pacified", is it? But surely you see that as long as these "bad terrorists" (or were they the "good terrorists"?) don't establish a base and control territory like a conventional military that we are "winning". Of course, we can ignore those who point out that the nature of an insurgency is that it does not fight like a conventional military force and control territory. Isn't this what the British did when they fought against American colonists? As long as the colonists fought in ambushes and ran away, they were not a "serious" force.
I must point out, however, that the surge was supposed to be all about providing enough security for the Al-Maliki government to bring stability to Iraq. Bush said:
Yet over time, we can expect to see Iraqi troops chasing down murderers, fewer brazen acts of terror, and growing trust and cooperation from Baghdad's residents. When this happens, daily life will improve, Iraqis will gain confidence in their leaders, and the government will have the breathing space it needs to make progress in other critical areas.
Notice how those "Iraqi troops" are doing all of the work? Does it seem to you that Iraqis have confidence in their leaders? Has anyone seen progress "in other critical areas"? In fact, we are allying ourselves with "murderers", the Iraqi troops are loyal to the sectarian militias more than they are loyal to the government, and, as the article points out, Al-Maliki is big trouble politically.
Apparently the plan all along was to divide the terrorists into "good" and "bad" groupings, keep them from settling down so they are forced to kill nomadically, and allow political paralysis to induce a collapse in the government, which is now defined as "breathing space". If so, things are moving according to plan. And as long as we can point to heavily-patrolled areas where people aren't dying, then we are winning. Except in Baghdad, of course. And Diyala. Aside from the failures, the surge is succeeding.
200 Al-Qaeda fighters assault Iraqi town
By Agence France Presse (AFP)
Friday, August 24, 2007
BAQOUBA, Iraq: Scores of Al-Qaeda fighters raided an Iraqi town Thursday, clashing with rival militants and police after killing a tribal sheikh in fighting that left 23 people dead and 15 others kidnapped. Brigadier General Ali Dalayan, police chief of Diyala's provincial capital of Baquba, said over 200 fighters from Al-Qaeda's Iraq affiliate attacked a mosque and the homes of tribal Sunni sheikhs in the town of Kanan.
"The first attack was against a mosque," he told AFP. "They blew up the mosque, then they bombed houses crowded with family members."
Three houses were attacked, including those of two sheikhs who support Iraqi police and US troops in their fight against Al-Qaeda, he said.
"Sheikh Yunis al-Tae was killed in the attack" along with an unknown number of his sons in one of the homes, he added.
Police countered with the support of gunmen from the Brigades of the 1920 Revolution, a Sunni insurgent group once allied with Al-Qaeda but now one of its fiercest rivals.
He was not immediately able to say how many people died in the raids and how many in the ensuing gun battle. At least one policeman was among the dead.
Dalayan said police had chased the attackers but had had a "difficult time as they planted roadside bombs around the town before escaping. We have arrested 22 Al-Qaeda suspects," he said. They were detained south of Kanan, 50 kilometers from Baghdad, in an area known to be a stronghold of Al-Qaeda in Iraq.
He said the attackers managed to abduct eight women and seven children.
The raid on Kanan came despite a massive military crackdown in Diyala by some 16,000 US and Iraqi troops who claimed success in their assault.
The US military said that the 12-day "Operation Lightning Hammer" ended Thursday successfully, with around 26 Al-Qaeda fighters killed and 50 villages cleared.
It said more than "80 tribal leaders and representatives" vowed to "unite in their fight against terrorists and become one tribe of Diyala. We have continued to diminish their [Al-Qaeda] supplies and disable Al-Qaeda's abilities to disrupt the population," the statement quoted Colonel David Sutherland, commander of US forces in Diyala, as saying.
He said that while not many militants were nabbed, the operation "proved to be a great success because we disrupted Al-Qaeda, causing them to run. Their fear of facing our forces proves the terrorists know there is no safe haven for them in Diyala. And though this specific operation is over, our fight is not over," he said in a statement.
http://www.dailystar.com.lb
The US military blames the group for much of the violence besetting Iraq. In recent months Al-Qaeda has been attacking the increasing number of Sunni Arab tribesmen who support US-led forces in fighting the militants.
Meanwhile, gunmen shot dead Khalid Othman, media spokesman for the Sunni Iraqi Islamic Party of Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi, in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul.
The attackers riddled Othman's car with bullets which also wounded his driver, said Brigadier General Abdel-Karim Khalaf al-Juburi of Mosul police.
In another incident, a roadside bomb killed one civilian in Baghdad's Jadida neighborhood, security officials said.
Also in Baghdad, an explosion rocked the heavily fortified Green Zone early Thursday but there were no casualties, a US Embassy official said.
The Green Zone, a walled-in city district, houses the Iraqi Parliament, the US and British embassies and several other foreign missions.
The US military announced Thursday that one of its soldiers was killed and four wounded in a roadside bomb explosion west of Baghdad the previous day.
The latest fatality took the military's losses in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion to 3,721, according to an AFP count based on Pentagon figures.
Meanwhile, a new US intelligence estimate warned Thursday Premier Nuri al-Maliki's government will become "more precarious" in the coming months.
"The IC [intelligence community] assesses that the Iraqi government will become more precarious over the next six to 12 months because of criticism by other members of the major Shiite coalition" as well as Sunni and Kurdish parties, the US intelligence estimate said. US politicians have lashed out against Maliki this week, expressing impatience with his government's progress in Iraq. President George W. Bush defended the Shiite premier Wednesday, calling him "a good guy." - AFP
No comments:
Post a Comment