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COMMENTARY
November 25, 2004
More death
At stake in Iraq just now is whether Jihadi terrorism and guerrilla action can be defeated. Iranian nuclear weapons are the bigger immediate issue but Iraq offers the definitive test of wills. Do the U.S. and allies have the stomach to see the Jihadis off even if this requires killing every one of them in a postmodern Iwo Jima? The whole Muslim world is waiting to see who wins this battle of wills and I do not think it is an exaggeration to say that the future course of Islam may be decided in light of it. The news from Iraq is good though we must look through carnage to see it. The audiotape which appeared yesterday from Abu Musab al-Zarqawi the "field marshal" of the Iraqi Jihad tells the story. He is apoplectic indeed apocalyptic about the failure of the whole Arab world to rise to his defence. He gives a very frank account of being "let down in the darkest circumstances" while "hundreds of thousands of the nation's sons are being slaughtered by the infidels". He thinks Iraq and Afghanistan have now been "handed over to the Jews and Crusaders". Verily: keep firing. In Fallujah the U.S. and allies uncovered the command centres of the Sunni Jihadi underground. Despite the best efforts of Zarqawi's henchmen to remove irreplaceable assets from Fallujah before the storm including their leader the allies are now sifting a trove of intelligence finds in the city. Early Tuesday U.S. British and Iraqi soldiers struck south of Baghdad into the spaces between Latifiya Mahmoudiya and Yousifiya on the map at the south end of the Sunni Triangle. This is the territory that includes Al Qaqaa the large arms dump the U.S. was accused (inaccurately) of not securing during the original invasion; and indeed everywhere in the Sunni Triangle astounding quantities of munitions continue to surface. Most are buried in fields; but according to several unofficial Marine sources not just some but all of the Sunni mosques so far entered have been found to conceal arms caches. It is becoming increasingly clear that Saddam Hussein his Revolutionary Guard and allied "Afghan Arabs" Syrians Palestinians and other Jihadi interests elaborately planned for the Iraqi "apr?s-guerre" and made especially good use of the months when the U.S. invasion threat was on public exhibit at the United Nations. Notwithstanding as in Fallujah the enemy south of Baghdad doesn't have a chance. The only question is how many allied soldiers they can take with them. Some of the enemy fighters are cowards but many aren't as the reader will discover by looking through the accounts of the embedded reporters. (Since I often condemn the New York Times let me seize this opportunity to praise the extraordinary work of the Times' Dexter Filkins who should get at least a Pulitzer.) But they are no match for the technology and discipline the U.S. can array against them; and with growing experience of urban warfare both U.S. and Iraqi soldiers get better and better at anticipating the booby-traps and tricks (which include wearing false uniforms waving white flags and pretending to be corpses). The area to the south of Baghdad while it is not the heart of the Sunni "insurgency" has become an obstacle course for Shia Iraqis communicating with the capital from the south of the country. Indeed part of Zarqawi's publicized strategy for defeating the new Iraqi government has been to molest and butcher Shias randomly in the hope of igniting a Sunni-Shia civil war. Would the United States be better off with more soldiers in Iraq? On certain days probably yes and the last few have been among them. The Marines and associates were able to take Fallujah in a week at what appeared to be optimal strength (fewer and it would have taken too long; more and there would have been friendly-fire incidents). The U.S. Army was a bit stretched dashing back to quell irruptions in Mosul and Baghdad but contrary to what I wrote last week it now appears they didn't have to draw down forces watching the Syrian frontier. They do not have enough troops to launch simultaneous raids in every Sunni town but it makes more sense to attack these in sections studying where the enemy flies as each nest is overturned and nailing the next lot more economically. While the stress placed upon the frontline soldiers is huge they have proved they can handle it and there remain two unanswerable objections to staffing up. One has been to reduce the number of targets for Jihadi ambushes. But it is still more important to keep pressure on the newly-trained Iraqi army to assume more and more of the responsibilities. This means not repeating the mistake that was made in Vietnam where the Americans effectively took over the war from the South Vietnamese who were then unable to defend themselves when the Americans went home. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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