Al Qaeda in trouble

OPINION:

There is some very good news coming from the battlefield in Iraq: The changes in U.S. military strategy instituted earlier this year by Gen. David Petraeus have been achieving remarkable success against al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). Indeed, it has been so successful that military commanders are debating how severely AQI’s terrorist capabilities have been damaged. Since January, the number of suicide bombings has been cut in half, from 60 down to 30 a month. U.S. commanders say that the combination of deployments of additional U.S. soldiers into what had been al Qaeda-controlled areas in Baghdad and Anbar province, as well as the recruitment of Sunnis to fight al Qaeda have made it much more difficult for terrorists to coordinate their operations. Gen. Raymond, Odierno, the second-ranking U.S. commander in Iraq, estimates that al Qaeda has seen it’s capabilities “degraded” by 60 to 70 percent since January. The situation has changed so dramatically for the better that Thomas E. Ricks and Karen DeYoung of The Washington Post published a front-page story yesterday in which they reported that the U.S. military “believes it has dealt devastating and perhaps irreversible blows to al Qaeda in Iraq in recent months.”

Evidence is mounting that al Qaeda’s thuggish behavior and brutality against civilians are turning an increasing number of Iraqis against it. Evan Kohlman, a terrorism expert who closely monitors al Qaeda for globalterroralert.com, translated a communique issued Oct. 2 by a group called Hamas in Iraq, a faction of the 1920 Revolution Brigades, a Sunni Islamist group that has taken up arms against al Qaeda and is coordinating its military operations with U.S. forces. In the communique, Hamas in Iraq denounces al Qaeda at length for its participation in the murders of Muslims, and describes in some detail how al Qaeda would launch rockets at mosques during Friday prayers and would kidnap and torture fellow Muslims. Another recent statement by the Iraqi Jihad Union described how al Qaeda attacked and killed women and children and IJU fighters, then dug up the graves of the victims and paraded through town with their mutilated corpses. (See www.nefafoundation.com).

It is this kind of behavior that is alienating Iraqis and driving an increasing number of them to join coalition forces in taking up arms against al Qaeda. And much if not all of it is directly attributable to the changes in strategy instituted by Gen. Petraeus. In this context, it was somewhat bizarre to listen to Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the former top commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, who on Friday delivered a rambling speech attacking the war and declaring that the United States cannot achieve victory. “The best we can do with this flawed approach is stave off defeat,” he said. Asked about this, Sen. Lindsey Graham, South Carolina Republican, recounted how, during his visits to Baghdad starting in 2003, Gen. Sanchez would insist that U.S. forces were not being overstretched, and that National Guard and Reserves were not being strained. We know now that Gen. Sanchez was badly mistaken, and it is unfortunate that he is now sniping at Gen. Petraeus, who is cleaning up the mess his predecessors’ flawed military strategy helped create.