What Goes Around Comes Around

The New York Times posted a story today about a training class in Iraq that went horribly wrong (at least for the students).

The article reports:

A group of Sunni militants attending a suicide bombing training class at a camp north of Baghdad were killed on Monday when their commander unwittingly conducted a demonstration with a belt that was packed with explosives, army and police officials said.

The militants belonged to a group known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, which is fighting the Shiite-dominated army of the Iraqi government, mostly in Anbar Province. But they are also linked to bomb attacks elsewhere and other fighting that has thrown Iraq deeper into sectarian violence.

Unfortunately Iraq is falling into total disarray since the Americans left. This incident during a training class for suicide bombers is one example of that disarray. Recently Al Qaeda raised its flag in Falluja, an act that represented the failure of the Iraqi government to control that city.

The article further reports:

But Iraq is developing a plan, with help from the United States, that would have Sunni tribes take the lead in ending the standoff with ISIS in Falluja, with the Iraqi Army in support, a senior State Department official told Congress last week.

The official, Brett McGurk, said that ISIS had about 2,000 fighters in Iraq, and that its longer-term objective is to establish a base of operations in Baghdad, led by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who has been officially designated as a global terrorist by the State Department.

The rise of terrorism and the rise of Al Qaeda are a result of the weak image America under President Obama is projecting. We shouldn’t be sending troops all over the world, but there should be an implicit threat that we will deal with terrorists and that we have the strength to do so. Right now that threat is not there.

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What Happened?

Yesterday Michal Ledeen posted an article at PJ Media about the meaning of recent events in Fallujah.

The article opens with the following statement:

Al-Qaeda is back in Fallujah and Ramadi, where we defeated them in the recent past. Everyone in the Middle East knew it, and they all knew al-Qaeda was on the ropes.  Recruitment was more difficult, fund-raising likewise, and the cult of bin Laden was decidedly wobbly.

Mr. Ledeen reminds us that instead of seizing the moment, the Obama Administration chose to leave the country without securing its victory.

The article continues:

So we walked away, abandoning those who had staked their future to America’s commitment to freedom, and giving hope and time to our enemies, who regrouped and attacked again.  Thus, Iraq, where the slaughter often exceeds the death toll in Syria.  Thus, Syria itself.  And Lebanon.

Al-Qaeda, and others like them, can now say, “You see, Allah is indeed with us.  We are stronger than ever.  Much stronger.  We used to have bands of terrorists, but today we have armies.  The Americans have run away from Iraq, where our flag now flies, and they are running away from Afghanistan, where the Taliban are preparing to impose God’s will.  The future is clear.  We will win.  Join us, or perish.”

That is the meaning of Fallujah.  And everyone in the Middle East knows it.  These Americans can win some battles, but they do not have the stomach to win the war.

Unless we are determined to finish a war we start, we have no business starting it. We went into Iraq because Saddam Hussein brazenly ignored all the sanctions and limitations the United Nations had imposed on him to prevent him from any further attacks on his neighbors and his own people. The question of whether or not he had nuclear weapons has never been resolved (despite what you may read in the mainstream media). He was a threat to peace in the Middle East. Looking back, Iran was probably a bigger threat, but they had not invaded any of their neighbors. Had the United Nations oil embargo on Iraq been handled by honest people, it probably would have crippled Iraq enough that America might have avoided the war, but the corruption in the oil for food program only complicated the situation.

The article at PJ Media concludes:

Here in Washington, some pundits are saying that things are actually going well, since radical Sunnis and Shi’ites are killing one another.  The problem with this cheery outlook is that eventually one of them will win, and the winner won’t be good for us.  Moreover, Sunnis and Shi’ites have demonstrated they can work well together when the mission is killing Americans.

They can do that even when they’re killing one another.  Just wait.

Until we realize that the goal of radical Islam is a world-wide caliphate, we will continue to lose Americans and essentially lose the war on terror. We are up against a theology that worships death–not life. While we fight according to our rules of war, the radicals train children to hate the ‘infidels’ and to become suicide bombers. We can’t afford to walk away from the radical Islamists in the Middle East–if we do, they will come here.

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Did We Mean To Give Fallujah To Al Qaeda?

John Hinderaker at Power Line posted a story today about the fact that Al Qaeda has taken over the city of Fallujah in Iraq. American lives were sacrificed to free that city from terrorists, and now it has fallen back into the hands of Al Qaeda.

A friend who is more familiar with Iraq than I am tells me that the fall of Iraq was inevitable whether America left forces there or not. I am not so sure.

The article reports:

A rejuvenated al-Qaeda-affiliated force asserted control over the western Iraqi city of Fallujah on Friday, raising its flag over government buildings and declaring an Islamic state in one of the most crucial areas that U.S. troops fought to pacify before withdrawing from Iraq two years ago. …

In Fallujah, where Marines fought the bloodiest battle of the Iraq war in 2004, the militants appeared to have the upper hand, underscoring the extent to which the Iraqi security forces have struggled to sustain the gains made by U.S. troops before they withdrew in December 2011. …

Events Friday suggested the [Marines’] fight may have been in vain.

“At the moment, there is no presence of the Iraqi state in Fallujah,” said a local journalist who asked not to be named because he fears for his safety. “The police and the army have abandoned the city, al-Qaeda has taken down all the Iraqi flags and burned them, and it has raised its own flag on all the buildings.”

I may be naive, but I believe that the people of Iraq would have stood with us to gain their freedom had we chosen to stay and fight the evil that is Al Qaeda with them, I believe that the country could have become a democracy. Now we will never know.

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