October 10, 2007

The Problems of Victory

By J.R. Dunn
We're closing in on victory in Iraq. (And, if Ray Robison is correct, perhaps at points east as well.) The Jihadis are nearing collapse across the country. With the exception of a few Ba'athist holdouts, the Sunni population is coming over in ever-greater numbers.Scarcely a day goes by without another Al-Queda kingpin being bagged by the Coalition. (Last week it was a financier with no less than a hundred million to play with. That would pay for a lot of car bombs.) The Jihadis have shown no ability to put together any kind of workable counterstrategy. According to Iraq the Model, the Jihadis have begun targeting remote villages (as predicted here last month), a practice that can only increase their isolation and accelerate their death spiral. Even Moqtada al-Sadr, Iraq's version of the rebel without a cause, appears to have smelled the coffee. This past weekend he at last shook hands with his mortal enemy, Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, leader of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC), the...(Read Full Article)