Frederick W. Kagan: We Can Win
[Mr. Kagan, a historian, is a resident scholar at AEI.]
Iraq is the central front in the war against Al Qaeda. And we are beginning to win. These are not talking points. They are facts on the ground, as I saw during my recent trips there.
Though you may be getting the opposite impression from news reports, the sectarian violence that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi had unleashed by destroying the Samarra Mosque in February 2006 has subsided. Measured weekly, sectarian killings are down by almost two-thirds since the start of the Baghdad security plan. Anbar Province, Al Qaeda's former sanctuary in western Iraq, has turned against the terrorists. Anbaris by the thousands are signing up to fight against Al Qaeda. Violent attacks in the province are down by 50 percent and combined casualties down by 65 percent between early January and mid-May.
The movement is spreading. Sheiks in Diyala, Salah-ad-Din and Babil provinces are reaching out to coalition forces to help us.
This is not the moment to consider withdrawal time lines that would snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, as the U.S. Congress seems determined to do. It is the time to redouble our efforts....
One thing impressed me above all on my most recent trip, from which I returned on May 13: Ordinary Iraqis have not given up. Sadrists in the parliament may demand our withdrawal, but the government of Iraq has repeatedly asked us to stay. Iraqi soldiers and police are fighting Al Qaeda and Shia militias every day, sacrificing alongside our troops.
One Iraqi commander told me, "Anyone who says the Americans should leave now is not a real Iraqi citizen."...
Read entire article at NY Daily News
Iraq is the central front in the war against Al Qaeda. And we are beginning to win. These are not talking points. They are facts on the ground, as I saw during my recent trips there.
Though you may be getting the opposite impression from news reports, the sectarian violence that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi had unleashed by destroying the Samarra Mosque in February 2006 has subsided. Measured weekly, sectarian killings are down by almost two-thirds since the start of the Baghdad security plan. Anbar Province, Al Qaeda's former sanctuary in western Iraq, has turned against the terrorists. Anbaris by the thousands are signing up to fight against Al Qaeda. Violent attacks in the province are down by 50 percent and combined casualties down by 65 percent between early January and mid-May.
The movement is spreading. Sheiks in Diyala, Salah-ad-Din and Babil provinces are reaching out to coalition forces to help us.
This is not the moment to consider withdrawal time lines that would snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, as the U.S. Congress seems determined to do. It is the time to redouble our efforts....
One thing impressed me above all on my most recent trip, from which I returned on May 13: Ordinary Iraqis have not given up. Sadrists in the parliament may demand our withdrawal, but the government of Iraq has repeatedly asked us to stay. Iraqi soldiers and police are fighting Al Qaeda and Shia militias every day, sacrificing alongside our troops.
One Iraqi commander told me, "Anyone who says the Americans should leave now is not a real Iraqi citizen."...