There is some relatively good news coming out of Iraq at the moment. It's not earth-shattering, but it's interesting. A couple of weeks ago the news started carrying stories about how people in the tribal areas were getting sick of Al-Qaida's excesses and violence. I know that there is the myth that the mainstream medial absolutely NEVER prints anything positive, but that's a load of crap. At any rate, this story is one that I have been following for a couple of weeks.
This reaction was predicted a couple of years ago by experts in the reason who pointed out that Iraqis regarded the foreign fighters as much of invaders as they regarded us. However, under the rationale that the enemy of my enemy is my friend, they went along with them hoping they could drive us out. When that didn't work things started to chage. We can definitely thank Al-Qaida for the beginning of their own demise in Iraq. Their bloody excesses and the indiscriminate torture and murder of not only men, but of women and children finally wore out their welcome with the tribal leaders, who began contacting the U.S. with information.
We started arming them and gathering intelligence. In addition to the violence, what drove the nail into Al-Qaida's coffin with many of the tribal leaders was their insistence that they were going to establish a strict Islamic state. You would think that these people would understand where Islam fits into a tribal mindset, but apparently they were city boys and did not.
The unfortunate thing is that while this is excellent news and certainly a bright point in my week, Al-Qaida and foreign fighters represent only a small percentage of the current violence in Iraq. The biggest source of the war in Iraq right now is the civil war between the various factions and even within the factions. It's a power struggle, and were every foreign fighter in Iraq to vanish tomorrow it wouldn't affect the level of violence more than just peripherally.
Still, we have to start somewhere, so here's your dose of good news out of Iraq for the week from the people who never actually cover the good news.
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Comments: 15
I wouldn't be a bit surprised to see them just chuck out the jihadists and then do exactly as you say.
All I know is, civil wars end when both sides are exhausted of killing each other, and there is no reason for our troops to be in the middle of it, because Bush can't or won't admit he made a horrible mistake.
He needs to live it.
Anderson, 51, is heading into what has become the deadliest war for reporters in modern history. But he believes he'll find a greater truth on the ground in Iraq than he does over the airwaves from his lakeside home in Frederic, Wis.
"I have a sense that more is happening in Iraq than bombs exploding. More is happening than death and destruction," he said. "It's a weak and fledgling democracy, but by God, it is a democracy. They vote, by God. So I know that there are good, lasting things that are happening in Iraq."
Anderson, a former reporter who now writes a right-leaning column for a weekly newspaper based in Frederic, says he never sees the "good news" stories on the nightly news.
So he decided one morning a few months ago to become a war correspondent. "
Here's a reporter that seems to want both sides of the story. He has no sponsorship from any news organization and no guarantee that anyone will publish his articles. But I'm going to try and post as many here as I can.
Here's the link to the rest of the article
http://www.twincities.com/wisconsin/ci_6054083
Voting is not some miracle that ensures a stable, effective government. We've proven that. Nobody in their right mind can for a moment believe our government at the moment is somehow effective. Voting is the first step. The next is electing people with the power and the desire to actually govern and make hard decisions. This has not happened in Iraq as yet.
As long as we sit back and prop them up and protect them from having to make their decisions, they will continue to let us fight and die for them. Hell, they're more than willing to take a two month long vacation while our soldiers continue to die and their own people die in even greater numbers. That pretty much says it all about how serious they are about their responsibilities as far as I am concerned.
Without US support, they would not last one week.
Saddam was rotten; he was also not allowing the separate sects of Iraq to fight and kill each other. HE was the only one allowed to kill people! And his major slaughters were over, no longer necessary.
But the Bush League had to get rid of that rotten, nasty dictator Saddam -- with no plan for how to resolve conflict between the different sects of Iraq without a strong-arm dictator keeping the peace by force. Iraqis have died at a much faster rate in the last four years than Saddam was killing them in the four years before the invasion.
If the Iraqi tribes are turning against Al Qaeda, it is one more argument for letting them run their own country, and getting out of their way. The best thing we could do for peace and democracy in Iraq may be to let the majority have their way and split into three countries.
Thing is this nasty object called reality had to mess it all up.