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Wed 22 Jun, 2005 03:02 pm
The War is Over, and We Won
By Karl Zinsmeister
Your editor returned to Iraq in April and May of 2005 for another embedded period of reporting. I could immediately see improvements compared to my earlier extended tours during 2003 and 2004. The Iraqi security forces, for example, are vastly more competent, and in some cases quite inspiring. Baghdad is now choked with traffic. Cell phones have spread like wildfire. And satellite TV dishes sprout from even the most humble mud hovels in the countryside.
Many of the soldiers I spent time with during this spring had also been deployed during the initial invasion back in 2003. Almost universally they talked to me about how much change they could see in the country. They noted progress in the attitudes of the people, in the condition of important infrastructure, in security.
I observed many examples of this myself. Take the two very different Baghdad neighborhoods of Haifa Street and Sadr City. The first is an upper-end commercial district in the heart of downtown. The second is one of Baghdad's worst slums, on the city's north edge.
I spent lots of time walking both neighborhoods this spring?-something that would not have been possible a year earlier, when both were active war zones, where tanks poured shells into buildings on a regular basis. Today, the primary work of our soldiers in each area is rebuilding sewers, paving roads, getting buildings repaired and secured, supplying schools and hospitals, getting trash picked up, managing traffic, and encouraging honest local governance.
What the establishment media covering Iraq have utterly failed to make clear today is this central reality: With the exception of periodic flare-ups in isolated corners, our struggle in Iraq as warfare is over. Egregious acts of terror will continue?-in Iraq as in many other parts of the world. But there is now no chance whatever of the U.S. losing this critical guerilla war.
Contrary to the impression given by most newspaper headlines, the United States has won the day in Iraq. In 2004, our military fought fierce battles in Najaf, Fallujah, and Sadr City. Many thousands of terrorists were killed, with comparatively little collateral damage. As examples of the very hardest sorts of urban combat, these will go down in history as smashing U.S. victories.
And our successes at urban combat (which, scandalously, are mostly untold stories in the U.S.) made it crystal clear to both the terrorists and the millions of moderate Iraqis that the insurgents simply cannot win against today's U.S. Army and Marines. That's why everyday citizens have surged into politics instead.
The terrorist struggle has hardly ended. Even a very small number of vicious men operating in secret will find opportunities to blow up outdoor markets and public buildings, assassinate prominent political figures, and knock down office towers. But public opinion is not on the insurgents' side, and the battle of Iraq is no longer one of war fighting?-but of policing and politics.
Policing and political problem-solving are mostly tasks for Iraqis, not Americans. And the Iraqis are taking them up, often with gusto. I saw much evidence that responsible Iraqis are gradually isolating the small but dangerously nihilistic minority trying to strangle their new society. With each passing month, U.S. forces will more and more become a kind of SWAT team that intervenes only to multiply the force of the emerging Iraqi security forces, and otherwise stays mostly in the background.
Increasingly, the Iraqi people are taking direction of their own lives. And like all other self-ruling populations, they are more interested in improving the quality of their lives than in mindless warring. It will take some time, but Iraq has begun the process of becoming a normal country.
Karl Zinsmeister is the Editor-in-Chief of The American Enterprise.
Posted: June 20, 2005
©2005 The American Enterprise | All rights reserved
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If the war is over why are we still there? oh, I see you didn't really mean the war is over, what you meant was "not everyone sees the same chaos that "liberals" see. and used that to create your own spin to happy-land. Well, happy trails to you as well and don't let the continued violence in Iraq get you down. Prosperity is just around the corner, I'm sure.
dyslexia wrote:If the war is over why are we still there? oh, I see you didn't really mean the war is over, what you meant was "not everyone sees the same chaos that "liberals" see. and used that to create your own spin to happy-land. Well, happy trails to you as well and don't let the continued violence in Iraq get you down. Prosperity is just around the corner, I'm sure.
Even you can't spoil my day after reading what Zinsmeister wrote......just think Dys, you may not be able to get your rocks off because there won't be any more front page stuff in the NYTimes which chortles about the carnage in Iraq..............Hahahaha.........I hope I spoiled your day.
You calling me a geologist? You need to read the TOS. btw can we readers assume this post of yours is about the Korean Police Action? I have noted that "war" was over, we won, and the people of Iraq are breathing easier because of it. In your world, rayban, is Nancy Reagan still president of the USA?
Al Qaeda in Iraq is NOT a mere policing problem best left to the Iraqis.
dyslexia wrote:You calling me a geologist? You need to read the TOS. btw can we readers assume this post of yours is about the Korean Police Action? I have noted that "war" was over, we won, and the people of Iraq are breathing easier because of it. In your world, rayban, is Nancy Reagan still president of the USA?
You might want to consider hiring a new script writer........the one you've got is either on halucinogins or has emotional stability problems. Either way you have a credibility problem due to weird disconnected wording in your responses.
rayban1 wrote:dyslexia wrote:You calling me a geologist? You need to read the TOS. btw can we readers assume this post of yours is about the Korean Police Action? I have noted that "war" was over, we won, and the people of Iraq are breathing easier because of it. In your world, rayban, is Nancy Reagan still president of the USA?
You might want to consider hiring a new script writer........the one you've got is either on halucinogins or has emotional stability problems. Either way you have a credibility problem due to weird disconnected wording in your responses.
I can't afford a script writer so I have to take the halucinogins in my treatment program for my emotional stability problems. You still running that amway scam or have to moved up to mary kay? I love those pink caddy's that you guys and gals get to drive, very motivating i bet.
I have a niece who works for USAID and she spent much of the spring in northern Iraq. She was supposed to leave May 1 but could not because of heavy fighting in the area. She was evacuated on May 18th but because it was considered too dangerous to fly she was taken overland to Turkey. None of this fighting appeared in the American media. I suppose it was considered just a local scrum.
dyslexia wrote:rayban1 wrote:dyslexia wrote:You calling me a geologist? You need to read the TOS. btw can we readers assume this post of yours is about the Korean Police Action? I have noted that "war" was over, we won, and the people of Iraq are breathing easier because of it. In your world, rayban, is Nancy Reagan still president of the USA?
You might want to consider hiring a new script writer........the one you've got is either on halucinogins or has emotional stability problems. Either way you have a credibility problem due to weird disconnected wording in your responses.
I can't afford a script writer so I have to take the halucinogins in my treatment program for my emotional stability problems. You still running that amway scam or have to moved up to mary kay? I love those pink caddy's that you guys and gals get to drive, very motivating i bet.
Hey easy on those halucinogins.......you're weaving from side to side.
of course I am, I'm dealing with the ghosts of Joe McCarthy, Richard Nixon, Spiro Agnew and the clone of Tom Delay here and I have to rely on rope-a-dope while moving at the speed of molassas to avoid your lightning quick jabs.
dyslexia wrote:of course I am, I'm dealing with the ghosts of Joe McCarthy, Richard Nixon, Spiro Agnew and the clone of Tom Delay here and I have to rely on rope-a-dope while moving at the speed of molassas to avoid your lightning quick jabs.
Yeah I've noticed how slow you're moving.........you get hit pretty often
The war's over? Does that mean the prison camps can be emptied now?
Surely we can bring all the troops home, scrap the Unpatriotic Act, shut down the torture centers . . . er, prison camps and allow the kidnapped Guardsmen and Reservists return to normal lives.
Any minute now . . .
Hooray! Our prime minister will no doubt soon announce that Oz troops are about to return home from Iraq!
God bless Karl Zinsmeister for revealing the good news! (um ... just what IS American Enterprise?
)
The American Enterprise Institute is a conservative "think" tank, as the expression goes--i.e., a propaganda factory.
Now why did I sort of already know that, Setanta?
Thanks for confirming my hunch.
That's not the War on Terrorism, right? Cant be with Al-Qaeda's number 1 and 2 still walking free in good health and sending out video messages ...
Oh, its the War on Weapons of Mass Destruction! I was wondering how that one was going ...
In a parallel thread, it doesn't sound like we have won much at all in terms of that War on Terrorism:
CIA report: "Iraq is now a terrorist training ground"
Quote:WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The CIA believes the Iraq insurgency poses an international threat and may produce better-trained Islamic terrorists than the 1980s Afghanistan war that gave rise to Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda, a U.S. counterterrorism official said on Wednesday.
A classified report from the U.S. spy agency says Iraqi and foreign fighters are developing a broad range of deadly skills, from car bombings and assassinations to tightly coordinated conventional attacks on police and military targets, the official said.
Once the insurgency ends, Islamic militants are likely to disperse as highly organized battle-hardened combatants capable of operating throughout the Arab-speaking world and in other regions including Europe.
[..] But the May report, which has been widely circulated in the intelligence community, also cites a potential threat to the United States.
"You have people coming to the action with anti-U.S. sentiment ... And since they're Iraqi or foreign Arabs or to some degree Kurds, they have more communities they can blend into outside Iraq," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the report's classified status.
Iraq has become a magnet for Islamic militants similar to Soviet-occupied Afghanistan two decades ago and Bosnia in the 1990s, U.S. officials say.
[..] President Bush justified the invasion of Iraq in part by charging that Saddam Hussein was supporting al Qaeda. A top U.S. inquiry later found no collaboration between prewar Iraq and the bin Laden network.
But since the invasion, Jordanian-born militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has emerged as a key insurgent figure and pledged his allegiance to bin Laden.
While the Afghan war against the Soviets was largely fought on a rural battlefield, the CIA report said Iraq is providing extremists with more comprehensive skills including training in operations devised for populated urban areas.
"You have everything from bombings and assassinations to more or less conventional attacks," the counterterrorism official said.
"The urban warfare experience, for people facing fairly tight police and military activity at close quarters, should enable them to operate in a wider range of settings."
CIA Director Porter Goss first described the insurgency in Iraq as an emerging international threat in February during testimony before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. [..]
I wonder if the CIA is next on the list for attack from the white house and white house fans?
ebrown, liked that.
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