The story is based on an AQI internal communique, which was intercepted by the U.S. military. The leader, or emir, says that his fighters should focus on killing U.S. and Iraqi soldiers, CLCs and cut back on the civilian murders. And the memo laments the volunteer suicide killers from overseas who are feeling demoralized because there are fewer missions for them when they arrive in Iraq.
"This created weakness and psychological defeat," the emir wrote. "This also created panic, fear and the unwillingness to fight. The morale of the fighters went down."
Not enough Moslems want to die for the weak horse in a losing war. So the jihadis are trying to refine who they kill in order to win back the Sunni Arabs in Iraq and around the world.
Of course, the signs of our eventual victory were apparent and I called this enemy error long ago:
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 positive results of that error back in spring 2004 have taken far longer than I expected, but the error was no less fatal for the time it has taken. Killing American and allied soldiers and police now comes too late in the war to do them any good. There are now hundreds of thousands of Iraqi soldiers and police who have the training and experience to take on more of the fight and do it effectively. And the battleground the jihadis are looking for as an alternative to Iraq seems to be Pakistan.
I guess fighting and winning in Iraq isn't just creating more jihadis. Shoot, the jihadis even lost Berkeley. Bummer for the bad guys, eh?
