Captured documents, and overheard conversations in Iraq reveal that many key terrorists are discouraged by setbacks and the ineffectiveness of their tactics. The increasing number of terrorist safe houses raided in the past few months has provided a large haul of "progress reports" written by low and mid-level terrorist leaders. Most of them complain of the ineffectiveness of their attacks, and the increasing number of successful raids by Iraqi and American troops. While Western media breathlessly reports every car bomb or ambush, there are not enough of these attacks to make a difference for the terrorists. The terrorists lose a much larger percentage of their people than the Iraqi security forces or American troops do. And in the Kurdish north and Shia Arab south, the terrorists rarely make any attacks at all, because the Sunni Arabs are too easily spotted. The captured "progress reports" and email, and overheard phone conversations, also reveal a sense of desperation. There is less money available or hiring the many people needed to carry out a bombing or ambush. And the people who took these jobs are shifting to better paying, or simply safer, reconstruction work, or other work in the booming economy.
Remember that fighting must achieve something to be glorified with the description as a strategy to win the war. War is the extension of politics by violent means, and all that. Otherwise it is just bloody televised violence and not war. Insurgent and terrorist violence has not stopped the creation of an Iraqi government and security apparatus out of virtually nothing.
Perspective and patience, people. Practice them a little longer, eh?
