Chester (via Winds of Change) highlights our offensive, Operation Quick Strike, into Al Anbar Province:
This operation is meant to sever the operational rear of the insurgency. The Iraqi government will gain control of the border area over the next 60 days and its influence will begin to slowly creep eastward. Terrorists will have to choose -- to die in battle, to flee to Syria, or to displace further and further east as the Coalition steamrolls behind them. This will not be a single decisive battle, like Fallujah, but will instead be a campaign of decreasingly lethal skirmishes. US Marines and some Army troops will form a shock force, but will leave the after-battle cleanup and establishment of law and order to Iraqi battalions and brigades -- a joint operation that will highlight the competencies of the US and the Iraqis both. In the process, the Iraqi units will gain valuable combat experience.
Yes, losing and AAV full of Marines was tragic. Yes, losing six Marine snipers at once was unfortunate. But the context is that they were lost as part of an offensive that is piling on previous successes. Strategypage puts the strategy into perspective and highlights our successes, noting we've cleaned out the Kurdish north and Shia south and even much of Baghdad. The big picture is this:
The major problem remains the movement of gunmen and weapons from Syria, as well as Iran, in eastern Iraq. So the Iraqis propose setting up a special, ten kilometer security zone along the borders. This zone would be strictly enforced in the rural areas, with civilians not allowed to carry weapons, and subject to searches and identity checks, as well as restrictions on movement (like no moving about at night). The Iraqis want to start imposing the new zone along the Syrian border immediately.
It gets better as we look at what we are doing:
Now, Iraqi and American troops are shutting down the Sunni Arab controlled cities in western Iraq and suburban Baghdad. Every week, more IED and car bomb workshops are captured, along with supplies of weapons and explosives, and hundreds of suspects, are captured. This is not considered big news. Explosions and dead bodies attract most of the media attention. So it's easy to
lose sight of what's really going on over there.
As I've noted before, the press just gives death notices and "poor victimized soldiers" stores without providing any context. In any other field they'd be embarassed to report with this level of ignorance:
American troops in Iraq, and Iraqis with access to the Internet (and Western media), get confused when they see what the media reports on what is going on in Iraq, compared to what is actually going on. Take the reports of the “worsening trend” in terrorist violence in Iraq. Car bombings, al Qaeda's specialty, have fallen from a record high of 170 in April, to 151 in May to 133 in June, with less than 100 in July. In the last two years, American and Iraqi forces have killed or captured over 50,000 terrorists and anti-government forces. While most of those arrested were questioned and released, the areas that are “out of control” have been greatly reduced. While the mass media like to show video of car bombings, if you look closely you will notice that, in the background of those vids, you see a prosperous Iraq, with people going about their business. There’s a lot more business in Iraq now. The biggest problems are not terrorists, but common criminals and corrupt government officials. Thus, while al Qaeda and armed Sunni Arabs get most of the coverage, the biggest threats to Iraq’s future are hardly covered at all.
And as the fighting goes on, with our forces pressing the enemy and the enemy hard pressed to mount a platoon-level attack and instead falling back on pure terrorism and IEDS, theIraqi government continues to form, the Iraqi military continues to grow and harden, and the Iraqi government makes progress in building the economy and bringing Sunnis inside the tent.
The enemy is losing. Very clearly, despite the press's ignorance of this fact. We must have the patience to reap the victory our soldiers are dying to give us.
