Sunni Arabs are losing hope of ever regaining power, because they seem to suffer one defeat after another. The rest of the Sunni Arab world, especially Saudi Arabia, has told the Iraqis Sunnis to make the best peace they can, because the Sunni Arab world will not come to their rescue.
The Sunnis who are fleeing Iraq's central regions for Anbar and points further west represent the Sunni Arabs who benefited from Saddam's rule:
Meanwhile, the Sunni Arab countries are trying to get the UN to persuade Western countries to take a lot of the Sunni Arabs fleeing Iraq. Many of these refugees are former killers for Saddam, or Islamic radicals. The Sunni Arab countries don't want to take them, and hope to shame some Western nations into doing so. Syria already has a huge community of Iraqi war criminals, and is trying to keep out anymore (unless they have a lot of money.) Jordan has tried to keep the Islamic terrorists out, but has been less strict about former Saddam supporters with shady pasts. The Sunni Arab world has been successful in getting the Western media to play down the Saddam connections of many of the Iraqi refugees, but the terrorism links may prove harder to hide.
These people provided the figurative sea in which the terrorists swam and hunted their prey. Their absence from Iraq helps us.
A year ago I figured the exodus of Sunni Arabs meant the resistance was losing hope of winning:
The reason these Sunnis flee now is that these backers of the former regime of Saddam are probably losing hope that their killers can sweep them back into power with their campaign of terror and intimidation.
The fact that backers of the Baathists are now leaving Iraq is not a sign that we are losing. It is a sign that the enemy is losing. They see little hope of running things any time soon and are getting out of town before the new cops come around with war crimes and human rights violation charges in hand. They see that even Saddam is in the witness stand with his own life on the line and have no desire to follow him to the gallows.
So don't transform the fleeing Sunnis into poor oppressed victims. They are former neck-stompers who have given up on their dreams of continuing their neck-stomping. This is a good thing.
I see no reason to change my mind. And I see no reason to give these losing killers hope that an early withdrawal from Iraq will allow them to reclaim their glory days. And I certainly see no reason to pay for the upkeep of these former Baathists.
