But Iraq in some places is becoming a place where battling terrorism is a law enforcement problem:
When the Iraqi Army caught Abdul al-Wasit, a mid-level operative for Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), he was working undercover as a shepherd in a rural area. It was a far cry from his earlier days in a village 65 miles south, where he used to extort locals and openly execute rivals.
The once seemingly untouchable insurgent had been reduced to hiding on the fringes of society. Many of his fellow operatives had joined him, and they continued to plan operations while supposedly trading sheep.
Facing a local population that has grown intolerant of AQI's indiscriminate acts of violence, many operatives like Mr. Wasit have gone underground – some have even formed sleeper cells in the Iraqi security forces. Members now only emerge from hiding to conduct high-profile attacks. Though this strategic shift has created an apparently less active AQI, the group has not given up the fight in Iraq and will likely remain a threat here for years.
Al Qaeda in Iraq is a threat, with religious hatred still motivating the jihadis. But more and more, the war will be fought with arrests of individuals and small cells by teams of Iraqi cops or paramilitary forces rather than complex military operations that must kill and drive out large groups of the enemy that try to stand and fight.
Of course, this is being made possible because we fought the jihadis and their allies as a military threat when it was appropriate these last several years, rather than clinging bitterly to notions that god and guns didn't matter in Iraq.
