{"id":245,"date":"2005-12-19T08:15:55","date_gmt":"2005-12-19T13:15:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=245"},"modified":"2005-12-19T18:28:05","modified_gmt":"2005-12-19T23:28:05","slug":"the-smell-of-victory-part-deux","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=245","title":{"rendered":"The smell of victory, part deux"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Aha.  The <a href='http:\/\/news.pajamasmedia.com\/2005\/12\/18\/6710814_Sunnis_say_they_.shtml'>Sunnis<br \/>\nsay they want to work with US<\/a>.  This comes hard in the heels of<br \/>\nreports that the Baathist dead-enders protected al-Qaeda polling<br \/>\nplaces from jihadis during the just-concluded elections, in which<br \/>\nturnout pushed 70% even in the heart of the Sunni triangle.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>I expect this story will be just as thoroughly overlooked in the<br \/>\nmainstream media as <a href='http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=143'>Qaddaffi&#8217;s<br \/>\nterrified capitulation<\/a> was back in 2003.  But it&#8217;s even more<br \/>\nimportant. We&#8217;re getting a clear message that the ex-Baathist end of<br \/>\nthe insurgency wants to put down its guns and enter electoral<br \/>\npolitics.  This matters a lot, because they were most of the footsoldiers.<br \/>\nThe al-Qaeda fighters are far fewer, and have alienated most Iraqis with<br \/>\na terror campaign that has killed more Iraqis than it has coalition<br \/>\ntroops.<\/p>\n<p>If the insurgent leaders believe they must stop fighting, this<br \/>\nimplies two other things: that the Sunni street has accepted that<br \/>\nSunnis aren&#8217;t going to run Iraq any more, and consequently that Iraq<br \/>\nis not going to fly apart into three Kurdish, Sunni and Shi&#8217;a<br \/>\nfragments.  The political foundations for a stable Iraq deeply hostile<br \/>\nto the Islamofascist program have been laid.<\/p>\n<p>(Yes, I support the development of a stable Iraqi state despite<br \/>\nmy anarcho-capitalism.  This is because I don&#8217;t think it&#8217;s possible to<br \/>\ngo from tribalism and autocracy to market anarchy in one go. At<br \/>\nmininimum, it takes a couple of generations of civil society to prepare<br \/>\npeople for true self-government.  Cultural experience matters.)<\/p>\n<p>Others in the blogosphere have noted that George Bush&#8217;s most recent<br \/>\nspeech uses a lot more &#8220;I&#8221;, that he&#8217;s taking personal responsibility<br \/>\nfor the U.S.&#8217;s Iraq strategy, and that this means he is now sure of<br \/>\nvictory and wants to nail down the credit.  I agree with this<br \/>\nassessment.  For the first time since 2003, I am now feeling fairly<br \/>\nsure that all the home-front sabotaging of the Iraq campaign by the<br \/>\nLeft and the mainstream media is going to come to nothing in the end.<br \/>\nIt&#8217;s not, after all, going to be Vietnam II; they will not snatch<br \/>\ndefeat from the jaws of victory again.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;d like to think this means emergency conditions will end soon,<br \/>\nand I can return to my natural position of calling for the dismantling<br \/>\nof government power rather than reluctantly supporting a government<br \/>\nwar.  Unfortunately, the Iraq campaign, like the Afghani campaign<br \/>\nbefore it, is only part of that longer-term war.  I think it is quite<br \/>\nlikely we will be required to invade and subdue Iran before the larger<br \/>\nstruggle to break the will of Islamofascism is over.  Alas, wishing we<br \/>\nhad tools other than state power for achieving this won&#8217;t make it<br \/>\nso.<\/p>\n<p>Still.  I expect to enjoy the effect on U.S. domestic politics as<br \/>\nthe Iraq insurgency collapses. The American Left, having committed itself<br \/>\nto defeatism, is going to get badly hammered in the 2006 elections. I&#8217;d<br \/>\nrelish that even more if I could be sure that the beneficiaries of their<br \/>\ncollapse wouldn&#8217;t be the Republicans, but you can&#8217;t have everything.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Aha. The Sunnis say they want to work with US. This comes hard in the heels of reports that the Baathist dead-enders protected al-Qaeda polling places from jihadis during the just-concluded elections, in which turnout pushed 70% even in the heart of the Sunni triangle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-245","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-terror","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=245"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}