Watching for Progress

At Blackfive

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Read through the last couple or three weeks of posts at B5 and Mudville, and one might get the impression that something good is afoot. Without sounding too optimistic, I'm sure there must be a reason for the progress we are seeing in Iraq, and (except for the loss of the Blackhawk with so many senior personnel and the Little Birds protecting the diplomatic convoy) for the small victories we are seeing in the news.

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Smarter minds here at B5 and elsewhere have commented intelligently on how long the counterinsurgency and nation building would take. If it weren't for all the noise surrounding how George W Bush's war is a failure, we might actually be getting some basic intelligence on how the war is actually going from the US and European press. But, alas, we aren't.

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The average insurgent today feels demoralized, disillusioned, and hunted.

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The Washington-initiated "surge" will speed-up the ongoing process of defeating the insurgency. But one should not consider the surge responsible for the turnaround. The lesson to be learned is to keep killing the killers until they realize their fate.

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Still, major bombings will continue for many years, for Al Qaeda will remain oblivious to all evidence of the insurgency's eventual defeat.

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Al Qaeda will continue the fight long after the Iraqi battlefield becomes inhospitable to their cause, and they will only realize the futility of their endeavor after they are defeated on the wider Middle East battlefield and elsewhere in the world.

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Victory is assured as long as we keep going down this path to choke the living crap out of an insurgency that desperately needs to die.