Money woes and repeated pastings at the hands of the good guys are drying up recruiting for the bad guys:
The enemy in Iraq is having a manpower shortage. This is noted by the reduction in the number of attacks on American troops, and the smaller groups of attackers involved in things like ambushes. This is one of the reasons for the new American policy of fighting it out with ambushes rather than hitting the accelerator. Because of money and recruiting problems, most ambushes in Iraq are conducted by a very small number of attackers. Unlike Vietnam, where the communists might deploy a hundred or so gunmen for an ambush, in Iraq ambush teams are most frequently 5-10 men.
And in the bigger picture, the more effective Shia and Kurd security forces that allow the Shias to exact revenge for decades of depravity at the hands of Sunnis plus the rage that jihadi terror attacks on Shia civilians has put the Sunnis of Iraq in the mind to get along:
The Sunni Arabs can offer no effective resistance. They have no allies. That's not a civil war. That's hopeless.
They may hope to restore their position with a nice coup in a decade or so but in the short run they know that continued resistance will just get them all killed or kicked out.
No money, no recruits, and no hope. Not exactly a winning strategy for the "resistance." Yet even as they get hammered, some over here demand we declare defeat and get out. Under those circumstances, were I an insurgent, I think I'd believe God was on my side, too.
