SENATORS LEVIN AND REID have introduced an amendment that would order the immediate withdrawal of American forces in Iraq--a stampede, in fact, that would require the military to pull 169,000 soldiers and their equipment out of active combat within nine months. There is no way that such a withdrawal would look like anything other than a rout and a humiliation for American arms. Such a proposal can only be supported on the premise that our efforts in Iraq to date have failed utterly and that there is no hope of protecting vital American interests in Iraq through the current strategy. That premise results from willful blindness. American and Iraqi successes in pursuing our joint and individual vital interests over the past nine months have been nothing short of staggering. The attempts of war critics to focus the discussion entirely on the failures of the Iraqi central government are disingenuous, almost dishonest, when they ignore these incredible, and in many cases, unexpected achievements.
Defeating al Qaeda in Iraq
Of America's vital interests in Iraq today, none is more important than defeating al Qaeda in Iraq. AQI, as I have argued elsewhere, is closely linked to the global al Qaeda movement, which has declared Iraq the central front in its terrorist war against America. It has stated its intention to use Iraq as a base to attack American interests and stability throughout the Middle East and beyond, and it has acted on that intention at least twice: Zarqawi used Iraq as a base from which
to kill USAID official Lawrence Foley in Amman in 2002, and again to conduct a massive coordinated suicide attack on hotels in Amman in 2005. The current head of AQI, Abu Ayyub al Masri (an Egyptian), recently announced a bounty for the assassination of a Swedish cartoonist who drew a disrespectful cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed. Al Masri clearly sees himself as part of the same team as Osama bin Laden and Ayman al Zawahiri if he is aping them in these outrageous gestures aimed at people far beyond the problems of his own country and of the country he seeks to take over.
| December 2006 |
September 2007 |
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AQI had safe-havens in Ramadi, Fallujah, and Karmah in Anbar. Virtually no Anbaris were willing to join the Iraqi Security Forces-a total of 1,000 recruits volunteered in Anbar in 2006.
| - Ramadi has been completely cleared
- The clearing of Fallujah and Karmah is being finished now
- Violence overall in Anbar has dropped to the lowest level in years
- Reconstruction is beginning for the first time
- More than 12,000 Anbaris have volunteered to join the ISF this year, and there are more than 21,000 ISF and "concerned citizens" operating in Anbar now
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AQI had seized control of Arab Jabour and other villages south of Baghdad and was using them as bases to launch massive suicide car-bomb attacks into the capital; |
- Arab Jabour and other AQI bases south of Baghdad have been cleared
- Car bomb factories and facilitators have been destroyed and captured or killed
- Hundreds of local Sunni have volunteered to join "concerned citizens" groups to protect their areas against AQI-including many who had previously helped AQI
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| AQI had fortified strongholds in the Dora neighborhood in East Rashid in Baghdad (a key transit point for the suicide car bombs coming from the south), and in Ameriyah in West Mansour in Baghdad; |
- Dora has been cleared, economic activity is picking up, hundreds of stores have reopened in a market that was entirely closed at the beginning of this year, and the neighborhood is no longer a safe transit area for car bombs;
- Ameriyah was cleared of AQI with the assistance of former insurgents who attacked AQI themselves and then sought Coalition assistance; they are now being integrated as "concerned citizens" into the ISF to keep AQI out of Ameriyah, where reconstruction is beginning
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| AQI owned Baqubah, the capital of Diyala Province so thoroughly that it was able to establish a massive fortified position with multiple houses rigged to explode, stacked artillery rounds deeply buried that could destroy American tanks, and safe-houses throughout the city. The situation got so bad that the governor of Diyala Province sought to move the capital from Baqubah to Muqdadiyah; |
- Baqubah has been cleared of al Qaeda;
- Violence in Baqubah and the surrounding areas has dropped dramatically;
- Coalition forces pursued AQI fighters fleeing from Baqubah up the Diyala River Valley, where they have captured and killed many terrorists, preventing them from reestablishing a safe-haven
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| AQI had spread its influence throughout Diyala Province and was using it as a base to attack Baghdad; |
- Coalition forces are pursuing AQI throughout Diyala province, preventing it from being used as a base for attacks against Baghdad, and working with the Iraqi Government and the provincial government to begin reconstruction;
- Multiple cease-fires have been signed between former insurgents and warring tribes;
- Baqubah is now protected by "Baqubah Guardians," another "concerned citizens" group fighting AQI
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| AQI was in the process of coopting the Sunni insurgent groups like the 1920s Revolution Brigades that had not previously supported al Qaeda's ideological agenda |
- The Sunni insurgency has broken;
- Some 30,000 former insurgents have rallied to the Coalition cause and are participating as "concerned citizens" or volunteers for the ISF;
- The remaining insurgents are inextricably tied to AQI and will share in its defeat;
- Support for those insurgents among Sunni populations is collapsing apace with support for AQI
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| AQI was able to conduct spectacular attacks almost unimpeded, including the destruction of the Samarra Mosque in February 2006 and massive car bomb attacks on markets and other gatherings of large groups--mostly Shia--throughout Baghdad; |
- The number and especially the scale of AQI attacks has dropped dramatically over the past few months, particularly in urban areas;
- Baghdad, Ramadi, Fallujah, Mosul, Baqubah, Kirkuk, and Samarra have all seen a steady reduction in the effectiveness of AQI attacks and, in many cases, in the absolute number of attacks;
- AQI attacks against small villages like the one that killed 500 Yazidis in Ninewah or the recent bicycle bombing in Tuz Khormatu (in the Diyala River Valley) demonstrate the terrorists' inability to conduct large-scale attacks in major urban areas
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| The flow of foreign fighters via Syria continued unabated, and those fighters comprised 80-90 percent of al Qaeda's suicide bombers |
- MNF-I reports that the flow of foreign fighters into Iraq from Syria has been falling over the past weeks, a trend visible in the falling numbers and effectiveness of AQI spectacular attacks
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