Standing on Their Own: The View From Amiriyat al Falluja

While much of the blogosphere today seems focused on John McCain's announcement that he's zzzzz... ah, um, running for President (and being a putz), or which side of the blogosphere is the most profane, and the "professional" media is glued to Anna Nicole Smith's burial plans, Reuters has produced a story about the war in Iraq that seems to be having a very difficult time finding the front page.

Iraqi security forces killed dozens of al Qaeda militants who attacked a village in western Anbar province on Wednesday, during fierce clashes that lasted much of the day, police officials said on Thursday.

Sunni tribal leaders are involved in an escalating power struggle with Sunni al Qaeda for control of Anbar, a vast desert province that is the heart of the Sunni Arab insurgency in Iraq.

Interior Ministry spokesman Abdul Karim Khalaf said foreign Arabs and Afghanis were among some 80 militants killed and 50 captured in the clashes in Amiriyat al Falluja, a village where local tribes had opposed al Qaeda.

A police official in the area, Ahmed al-Falluji, put the number of militants killed at 70, with three police killed.

If you read the entire article, you'll note something that should be of great interest to readers here in the United States: when al Qaeda attacked the village, residents of this Anbar province town turned not to the U.S. military to take back their homes, but Iraqi security forces, and it was these Iraqi security forces, with no U.S. military involvement at all, that crushed the al Qaeda attack.

Amiriyat al Falluja is only a small town in western Iraq, and it is by no measure the largest battle here in Anbar's past or future, but this battle still bears noting. Why? It is the embodiment of what both Democrats and Republicans should be hoping for in regards to the future of Iraq.

In this town, on this day, Iraqi soldiers and policemen fought a pitched battle against a sizable force of al Qaeda fighters, and prevailed without our guidance, and without our intervention. They won this battle convincingly, standing on their own. What's more, the local citizens trusted them to be able to do so.

This is perhaps an isolated incident in an isolated corner of the western Iraqi desert, but it is, after all, exactly what we've hoped for. Iraqi policemen and soldiers came through for their fellow Iraqi citizens, and carried the day. We've been waiting for such news for four long years.

It's a shame that few of us in this country seem destined to ever hear about it.