Jewish World Review May 12, 2005 / 3 Iyar, 5765

Suicide attacks in Iraq signal the weakening — not strengthening — of insurgency

By Jack Kelly

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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | There has been an upsurge of suicide bombings in Iraq. The usual suspects are hanging out black crepe:

"Iraq's insurgency is roaring back to life with a series of deadly attacks aimed at crippling the new government and forcing a U.S. pullout," wrote Jamie Taraby of the AP in a dispatch May 4th. "The government, meanwhile, is wracked by infighting with its security forces still in training and no sign of a strategy to deal with the growing violence."

Actually, the new Iraqi government, and ours, do have a strategy for dealing with the terrorists:

"U.S. forces have launched an offensive against insurgents in western Iraq near the Syrian border, and about 75 militants were killed in the first 24 hours," the AP reported Monday, citing military press releases.

"Weekend raids sweep southward, net more than 100 alleged Iraqi insurgents," said the headline Monday in the Mideast edition of Stars and Stripes, describing actions besides the one mentioned in the AP dispatch.

Among those netted in the raids is Ammar Adnan Mohammed Hamza al Zubaydi, a lieutenant of Abu Musab al Zarqawi, the al Qaida chieftain in Iraq.

Zubaydi's capture likely is fallout from the near death experience Zarqawi had with Task Force 626 near Ramadi in March. Zarqawi got away, but his lap top computer — chock full of interesting stuff — didn't.

Suicide attacks have become more frequent and more ruthless, U.S. officials told the Washington Post's Bradley Graham. The number of car bombings increased to 135 in April from 64 February, Graham reported Monday, and the proportion of those involving a suicide bomber rose to 50 percent from 25 percent.

Military officials believe al Qaida is now both the largest and most immediate threat in Iraq, Graham reported. The insurgency had been dominated by "former regime elements" — Sunni Muslim Iraqis loyal to Saddam Hussein, most of them former Baath party members, Republican Guard soldiers, or intelligence officers.

The number of foreign fighters infiltrating into Iraq has been increasing, Gen. George Casey, the senior U.S. commander in Iraq, told Graham.

But contrary to the impression you get in our media, al Qaida is coming to the forefront in Iraq through a process of subtraction, not addition. More and more "former regime elements" are throwing in the towel. The air is going out of al Qaida's balloon, too. Just more slowly.

The suicide bombings have three strategic purposes: One is to scare Iraqis away from supporting the government. But each week at least 1,500 Iraqis enlist in either the army or the police.

Al Qaida has been bumping up the body count by attacking softer targets — mosques and open air markets instead of police stations and military bases — but the suicide attacks are strengthening, not diminishing, the will of Iraqis to resist.

"The terror campaign is beyond ineffective," said Jim Dunnigan of StrategyPage.com. "It's the major reason why popular opinion in Iraq, and the Arab world, has turned against al Qaida. When the terrorist bombings began to kill large numbers of civilians back in late 2003...Iraqis didn't believe al Qaida and the Baath party terrorists could be so stupid. Now, Iraqis consider al Qaida and the Baath party terrorists to be depraved, and rather clueless, butchers."

Nor should we be alarmed — as many in the media are — that more al Qaida terrorists are infiltrating into Iraq. There were 651 terrorist attacks on Americans around the world in 2004, up from 208 in 2003, the State Department reported. This is spun as another failure of Bush policy. But none of those attacks were within the U.S. One of the reasons for invading Iraq was so that we would fight the terrorists in their homeland, not ours.

A second strategic objective of the terror attacks is to provoke a civil war between the Sunnis and the Shias and Kurds. But StrategyPage notes: "Even the Sunni Arab media are in awe of the Iraqi Shia and Kurds, for not slaughtering large numbers of Sunni Arabs in response to the terrorism, or simply as revenge for centuries of torment at the hands of the Sunni Arabs."

The third strategic purpose of the suicide bombings is to generate gloomy headlines in the Western media. That's the only part of the strategy that's working. Journalists should ask themselves why.