The attacks on Iraqi Shias have been a major error on the part of our enemies in Iraq. The Baathists and Sadr's fools targeted our forces in their resistance this last year. Sadr was ineffective in his spring revolt while the Baathists
continue to attack our troops, although they rarely try to attack
directly at close range to avoid losing heavily in firefights with our
more skilled troops. During the Fallujah uprising in April when the Baathists took on our Marines, our casualties mounted even as we killed the enemy in large numbers. Support in the US for the war went down. With our casualties declining again, public support for the Iraq campaign is going up. The Baathists
have the right idea focusing on our troops but luckily we are too good
to target at the April rate for long—somebody in the enemy ranks has
to survive for the next attack, after all. In this force-on-force
struggle, we are winning despite the correct enemy focus.
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.
So by targeting the Shias with increasingly gruesome bombings (and a lot of Sunnis in the latest series of attacks), the Islamists have made the Shias realize they have to fight the insurgents to protect themselves. As the interim Iraqi prime minister stated:
"We
are going to defeat them. We are going to crush them," he said at a
ceremony marking the transfer of the final 11 government ministries to
Iraqi control. "We expect more escalation in the days ahead."
With the Iraqis determined to fight the
terrorists, we have but to provide the means and back them up with our
troops in a reserve capacity. The will to fight is the most important
element and the Zarqawi strategy has given us Iraqi allies with that determination.
This civil war strategy of the Islamists was always going to be a loser for the Baathists. A Sunni-Shia war might have been fine when the Sunnis controlled all the instruments of state power, but in a fight in which the Shias
have the numbers and the state, this cannot work. At best, this path
could inflame the oil-free Sunni heartland in revolt but this would not
gain the entire country back for the Baathists. The Baathists could only win it all back if the Shias joined them against America as a common enemy, as some thought was happening in April at the start of the twin Fallujah and Sadr revolts.
For all the mistakes we have made, our enemy may have made the most critical of them all.
