Iraqi Baathists, led by Saddam's former righthand man Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, have decided to “disown al-Qaeda.” It is in an interesting development in the insurgency since Saddam's Baathists have fought alongside al Qaeda since the beginning of this war.
First of all, you mean secular enemies of ours can work with jihadis? Somebody inform the CIA and our foreign policy elites of this dramatic development! (Yeah, that felt good.)
Second, it has been a long time coming, but this development ratifies the call I made in June 2004 that the Baathist decision to throw in their lot with the jihadis would turn out to be their critical mistake in the war. A mistake that would lead to our ultimate success. I wrote:
I think the main reason for our success is that the Islamists with their foreign jihadis have screwed things up for the Baathists. That is, if the insurgents (or regime remnants or whatever you want to call them) had been able to target Americans and our allies without other complications, the vast majority of Iraqis might have decided to sit out the war as neutrals and just watch passively to see who will win. Absent a really ruthless American campaign, we would never win if we fought enemies in a sea of apathy that slowly turned against us as the violence continued.
The Islamists screwed up this possible path to Baathist victory. The Zarqawi memo highlighted the idea that the Islamists wanted to target the Shias in order to force the Sunnis to rise up out of fear. Then there would be a nice civil war and the Islamists would have their happy hunting ground of chaos in which to kill Americans. With high enough casualties and really bad press coverage, we might then have pulled out in defeat. Defeating us somewhere—anywhere—is the Islamist goal—not Islamizing Iraq in particular. Remember the reports that al Qaeda was turning their focus on Iraq at the expense of Afghanistan? The fight is the focus. Note, too, that the memo says that the Islamists would have to find another battleground if they cannot win in Iraq. The Islamists may not have had a choice since they don’t number very many. How could they take on the Army and Marines directly? Attacking civilians is a heck of a lot easier.
In this post, I was talking about how the unholy alliance drove the Shias to support our efforts against the Sunni Arab resistance. But with the Shias and Kurds determined to defeat the terrorism carried out by the jihadis, the Sunni Arabs couldn't afford to associate themselves from a bloody but losing ally.
The trend took far longer than I thought to take hold, but the refusal of the world to give up hope that the Baathists would win and the refusal of the Sunni Arabs to abandon habits borne of centuries of ruling Shias and Kurds (bolstered by plentiful weapons and money inside Iraq) meant that the Sunni Arabs refused to read the handwriting on the wall for many years longer than common sense would have indicated.
Even before the war, the Baathists thought that the jihadis were fools to be manipulated in the service of Saddam. The Fedayeen were just cannon fodder. During the insurgency, the Baathists still thought they could keep the rubes as a weapon they controlled. But the jihadis had a mind of their own and wished to kill on a far grander scale than the Baathists might have wished. The jihadis spoiled the planned party.
There is little excuse for so many in the West to fail to understand that a Sunni Arab minority could not sustain their rule and resistance in the long run. Their movement away from resistance and toward giving up continues at an accelerating pace.
