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Wretchard of The Belmont Club has a post about the retaking of Tel-Afar. It is a small town in Iraq near the Syrian border. It seems Al Qaeda and other terrorists have taken over the town. A military operation is in play to retake the town from the terrorists. What is significant about his operation is the Iraqis are taking the lead. Coalition forces, both air and ground are backing them up, but the Iraqis are at the tip of the spear.
It has seemed like a long time coming, but it’s finally starting. It has taken a while to stand up the Iraqi army. You don’t build an army overnight. Any US strategy is not announced to the press. You have to deduce it from events. As Wretchard says . . .
First up the rivers, now the border. The pattern of campaigning against the insurgents began with an attempt to control the Euphrates and Tigris river lines moving northward from Baghdad. The current emphasis has been upon controlling the Syrian border, on which both the river lines are anchored. Over the last several months, US forces have laid down the logistical infrastructure for moving men and equipment rapidly into the space north of the Euphrates going eastward to the Tigris, a process described in the post Battle for the Border.Apart from the military effect of the current operation, it sends the message to insurgents that these may be the first of the post-occupation crackdowns by the Iraqi government. Because the Iraqi government is dominated by Shi'ites and Kurds, not only for demographic reasons but because of the insurgency's policy of nonparticipation in the political process started by the US, there are fears that sectarian fighting in Iraq may degenerate into a civil war leading to the breakup of the country. Mounting Iraqi-led operations while there are still very large numbers of American forces in- country restrains sectarian elements from going on a rampage. It also has the advantage of putting the Syrians on notice that the new Iraqi government, which the Ba'athists are increasingly unlikely to recapture, is taking steps to maintain its territorial integrity. Given another year the new Iraqi government may come to regard the Syrian-supported infiltration as a cassus belli -- not necessarily, but the threat is there.
I recommend you read his whole post.
With the hurricane making daily front-page news, the Iraq war has lapsed to the back pages. This is a defeat for the terrorist. US service men and women were never the real terrorists’ targets. The American public was. The terrorists’ only hope for survival was to convince the American public the war was too expensive in blood. That’s why they video taped their beheadings. They were trying to make the American public afraid. They were successful with some. The sheer viciousness of the terrorists frightening many Americans and they have call for a unilateral US withdrawal.
Now Americans are too busy trying to make the hurricane someone’s fault to worry about Iraq. Cindy Sheehan would walk naked down the streets of Crawford and she wouldn’t be able to get a single news organization to report it.
Posted by The Vorlon at September 11, 2005 8:41 PM