February 06, 2008
Acts of Desperation
I wrote several days ago about how the use of mentally-disabled suicide bombers showed just how desperate al Qaeda in Iraq in was/is becoming, stating:
These attacks today serve to show that al Qaeda in Iraq is not quite finished, but then, that is something we already knew. What is does show us is just how desperate they are to retain relevance in a war that is going very badly for them.Far from today's attacks being a sign of the "surge" in Iraq failing, the extraordinary lengths al Qaeda was forced to take to carry out these attacks show that the "surge" and the COIN doctrine implemented by General Petraeus are working precisely as we'd hoped.
A story published today showing that al Qaeda is now training children to carry out attacks merely confirms that theory.
Al Qaeda propaganda tapes released by the Pentagon reveal a possible new trend in the group's terror strategy in Iraq.The tapes, obtained by FOXNews and later released to the media, are training videos showing black-masked Iraqi children between 6 and 14 being taught how to hold AK-47s, how to stop a car and carry out a kidnapping, how to break into a house and how to break into a courtyard and terrorize the individuals living there.
Footage aired for reporters showed an apparent training operation in which the boys are shown storming a house and holding guns to the heads of mock residents. Another tape showed a young boy wearing a suicide vest and posing with automatic weapons.
They also are seen being taught to use rocket-propelled grenade launchers.
"These were young boys all masked and hooded, all outfitted with weapons; adults were doing the training," said Rear Adm. Greg Smith, a spokesman for Multinational Forces Iraq.
"Al Qaeda is clearly using children to exploit other children to get the interest of Jihad spread among teenagers far and wide. They use this footage on the Internet to encourage other young boys to join the jihad movement."
al Qaeda has been forced to a point where it is recruiting children to fight for it in Iraq, attempting to indoctrinate them at a young age to become acolytes of terror. While this is hardly unknown in terrorist cultures outside of Iraq—it is disturbingly common to see Palestinians indoctrinate their children this way—it has been very rare in Iraq, where al Qaeda has a desperate need for fighters now, not years from now. The children al Qaeda is training are trained for current operations.
This strongly suggests, like did the use of mentally disabled women last week, that al Qaeda is increasingly unable to find military-aged men in Iraq to carry out their attacks.
Last week at liberal blog Newshoggers, Libby called the use of mentally-disabled female suicide bombers as " a sign of adaptation and a brilliant one at that" before asking, "Perhaps Mr. Owens can educate me on how our troops are supposed to counter this new evil tactic? That would be helpful."
The quite obvious answer that she should have been able to grasp on her own was that we are successfully countering al Qaeda, using the exact COIN doctrine that she and her fellow liberals still refuse to recognize as working.
al Qaeda is forced to go to such lengths as using the mentally infirm and impressionable children as foot soldiers precisely because the COIN strategy being implemented by coalition military forces and Iraqi security forces and CLCs, is depriving the insurgents and terrorists of their base of support. Without popular support from significant sections of the population, insurgencies are doomed to fail.
While horrific and speaking a great deal about their depravity, these acts show that al Qaeda in Iraq and associated insurgent groups and criminal gangs are increasingly desperate. The proven COIN doctrine being implemented against these groups is increasingly more effective. Far from being able to brilliantly adapt, al Qaeda in Iraq has once again been proven itself to be incapable of long-term success, or even survival.
Libby has a remarkable and consistent ability to compose fact free posts, whether in the form of paeans to the glory of Hugo Chavez or screeds about the quagmire in Iraq.
Is that site intended as a humor blog?
Posted by: daleyrocks at February 6, 2008 12:11 PMHm, using children to fight your battles for you? Where have I seen that before?
Posted by: Tom at February 6, 2008 01:03 PMErrmmm... here's the fantastic COIN strategy.
Before COIN
(AlQ + insurgents + terrorists) vs US
After COIN
AlQ vs (US + CLCs)
errmm... where did the insurgents and terrorists go?
CLCs are composed of folk who hate the Shia-dominated government, which is friendly towards Iran (the axis of evil).
But there are more Shias than Sunnis, so that's democracy, so that must be alright then?
Such is the great, coherent American vision for the Middle East.
Posted by: Max at February 6, 2008 01:26 PMAre you saying we should just kill all the Shia, Max? You know, because they're Shia? Please, do give us your coherent vision for the Middle East.
Posted by: Pablo at February 6, 2008 01:39 PMYes, the reduction of violence to horrendous 2005 levels - the levels at which the war was unwinnable and only Bush cultists denied that Iraq was in a civil war - is proof that we're winning.
Meanwhile, all reports of "political progress" turn out to be bogus or worse, Iraqis are still fleeing Iraq in great numbers, and so forth. Iraq is at 2005 levels and in 2005 we couldn't "win" either, so the surge has accomplished nothing except to kill a lot of Iraqis (since the surge caused violence to spike from January through August of 2007) and allow Bush to achieve his agenda of American defeat.
No wonder, given the failure of the surge and the knowledge that a 2007 withdrawal would have produced better results (violence would have gone up for a while, as it did under the surge, but the result would have been a real Iraqi government rather than the current 2005-level bloodbath), no wonder the only good news you can find is that Iraqi children are taking up arms to kill other Iraqis.
(I know you prefer to use the term "Al Qaeda" to describe anyone taking up arms, but these kids are Iraqis, and whether or not you think it's "brilliant," the fact that America has turned Iraq into a place where kids are being drafted into the civil war is further proof that America can only make Iraq better by leaving.)
Posted by: T.B. at February 6, 2008 03:10 PMAnd the BDS rears its head...
Posted by: Conservative CBU at February 6, 2008 03:50 PMJebus T.B. - your cognitive dissonance is simply breathtaking.
"Most refugees interviewed do not agree with the idea that security has sufficiently improved in Iraq." .... how the hell would they know? They've been in SYRIA all this time.
I get some of my news about the state of Iraq from actual Iraqis living in IRAQ. Mohammed, over at Iraq the Model, quips:
"Yesterday a joint US-Iraqi force with help from local anti-al-Qaeda awakening fighters in the Adhamiyah district in northeastern Baghdad found and disarmed more than 20 vehicles rigged as VBIEDs in a parking lot."
I guess AIQ couldn't find enough mentally challenged to drive em. To bad, so sad.
Does this mean it's all rainbows and unicorns over there? No. But neither is it a quagmire.
COIN is working. This has nothing to do with liking the POTUS.
As for "Political Progress", ItM has something to say about that as well:
"On the other hand, the rise of rational political and popular tribal Sunni leaderships, who are seen as heroes in the Iraqi west, caused the old "stars" to fade out. In fact the new leaderships seem to be more capable of leading the populace in the provinces where the insurgency was dominant even more efficiently than the Baath was.
The incremental building of a nation and the simultaneous prelude for the contraction of an insurgency were not easy to see through the smoke of battle, but now things have changed and the results will be clear."
I'm not even going to comment on your last part. That break with reality reminds me of the Paulite screed about how we deserved 9/11. That kind of hyperbole just doesn't deserve a reply.
Posted by: Dan Irving at February 6, 2008 04:34 PMI would figure proglodyte bloggers would horrified by the use of the mentally impaired as bomb fodder, hitting them as close to home as it does.
Cordially...
Posted by: Rick at February 6, 2008 05:15 PMRick - Irony is beyond them.
Posted by: daleyrocks at February 6, 2008 05:28 PMHey, TB, you wanna talk about political progress? The Iraqi parliament in 2007 passed more substantive bills (meaning that we exclude bills naming post offices after some Senator's third cousin twice removed) than the Democrat-controlled US Congress!
When do we start the pullout from DC?
Posted by: C-C-G at February 6, 2008 08:25 PMI guess AIQ couldn't find enough mentally challenged to drive em.
They need to recruit in Berkeley. Lots of liberal retards there.
Posted by: Purple Avenger at February 6, 2008 11:15 PM"On the other hand, the rise of rational political and popular tribal Sunni leaderships, who are seen as heroes in the Iraqi west, caused the old "stars" to fade out. In fact the new leaderships seem to be more capable of leading the populace in the provinces where the insurgency was dominant even more efficiently than the Baath was.
Isn't it funny that those who are so wrapped up in the CHANGE!! meme in American politics can be so blind to it actually happening in Iraq?
Posted by: Pablo at February 7, 2008 06:18 AMMeanwhile, all reports of "political progress" turn out to be bogus or worse, Iraqis are still fleeing Iraq in great numbers, and so forth. Iraq is at 2005 levels and in 2005 we couldn't "win" either, so the surge has accomplished nothing except to kill a lot of Iraqis (since the surge caused violence to spike from January through August of 2007) and allow Bush to achieve his agenda of American defeat.No wonder, given the failure of the surge and the knowledge that a 2007 withdrawal would have produced better results (violence would have gone up for a while, as it did under the surge, but the result would have been a real Iraqi government rather than the current 2005-level bloodbath), no wonder the only good news you can find is that Iraqi children are taking up arms to kill other Iraqis........
Posted by T.B. at February 6, 2008 03:10 PM
It is so comforting to know that TB and his progressive brethren believe that it would be so much more humane for thousands of Iraqis to die at their own hands, all while using their children to kill each other (including the 10 yr olds killing their 10 yr old neighbors, or 60 yr old uncles by marriage), than for American and Iraqi soldiers to place themselves in the middle of the civil war/insurgency/al Qaida Terror and simply prevent it with their presence. It has a cost, to be sure, in American and Iraqi blood. But is that cost less than waiting for the Islamic Army in Iraq (as the al Qaida shadow government calls itself) to kill hundreds of thousands of Shia, set up a Wahhabi government in Iraq, and establish more training camps to train terrorists to infiltrate the US and Europe, and set off biological warfare or nuclear warfare? Maybe chemical attacks?
I feel so much safer with Dhimmicrats in charge. Don't you?
Subsunk
Posted by: Subsunk at February 7, 2008 08:36 AMThe recruitment of children is just another affirmation of the liberal aphorism that one man's terrorist is Michael Moore's freedom fighter.
Posted by: Mark L at February 7, 2008 08:49 AMAQ is using the disabled and children in their terrorist campaign, BUT LETS JUST BLAME THE COMMIE TRAITORISTS PINKO GAY MARRIAGE LOVING LIBERALS DHIMMICRAPISTS!
LIBERALS!! LIBERALLS!! LLLIIBBEERRAALLSSSSZZZZ!!!11
Posted by: notforsalethanks at February 7, 2008 09:20 AMOh, no one's blaming liberals for sending them to kill and die, notforsalethanks. Just for giving al-Q cover when they do it. And yes, that means you too.
Posted by: Pablo at February 7, 2008 10:01 AMThe success of the surge in bringing violence way down and stimulating political reconciliation appears to have unhinged some on the left. It appears to hurt them that history will now look very unfavorably on their wimpy attempts to force retreat in mid 2007.
Posted by: grrrrrrrrrr at February 7, 2008 10:14 PM
