Remember that the Taliban beat the other tribes of Afghanistan to set themselves up in Kabul as the rulers of the country after the Soviets pulled out of Afghanistan. The Northern Alliance was pushed to a corner of the country where they held on with little hope of toppling the Taliban. Little hope until our special forces and smart bombs showed up in October 2001, that is.
So I don't assume the al Qaeda jihadis, or Baathists, or the home-grown Islamists, or the pro-Iranian Shia thugs are permanently defeated.
We certainly don't plan on sitting out this fight even after we pull out of Iraq's major cities:
American forces will still conduct joint combat operations even after they pull back to bases outside Baghdad and other cities as part of the U.S.-Iraqi security agreement, a spokesman said Sunday.
Brig. Gen. Frederick Rudesheim, a deputy commander of U.S. forces in Baghdad, said the redeployment to the periphery will actually help improve security in the capital because U.S. troops can help stop militants from using bases in rural areas to stage urban attacks.
"I want to leave it very clear that there's no cessation of combat operations," Rudesheim said at a news conference in Baghdad's heavily guarded Green Zone.
But he said the troops will travel to the site of the combat operations from bases outside the city instead of outposts that were established throughout various neighborhoods as part of the 2007 U.S. troop surge.
Our combat help will remain useful and our logistics and support functions will remain critical for quite some time.
Hopefully, the fight becomes less of large scale operations to defeat enemy targets and more of a law enforcement-scope fight:
In an interview with The Associated Press, [Interior Minister Jawad] al-Bolani said it appears that al-Qaida in Iraq is unleashing sleeper cells in a bid to reassert itself after being routed in recent U.S.-Iraqi military operations. He said the key to defeating the insurgents lies in better intelligence, not more wide-scale fighting.
"I do believe that launching major military operations against al-Qaida is no longer needed and that there is a need to activate the intelligence side," al-Bolani said in an interview at his office in a former Saddam Hussein palace on the edge of Baghdad's heavily guarded Green Zone.
"There are some al-Qaida sleeper cells who are refreshing their activities to prove that they are still able to conduct attacks," al-Bolani said. "The only challenges we are facing (from them) are the suicide bombers and car bombs."
Al-Bolani appealed for more intelligence support from U.S.-led forces, although he noted that "Iraqis have acquired good experience over the past years."
An al-Qaida front group claimed responsibility for the Sunday attack.
Iraqi forces also have evidence that hard-line Shiite militants are regrouping in Baghdad and some southern provinces like Maysan and Basra, he said.
Embers can flame up, much as the defeated Northern Alliance swept into Kabul when the situation changed by the introduction of American power. I don't know what force could rejuvenate the Iranian puppets or jihadis, but I don't need to know that detail to know it is possible.
I've long argued that it is a false choice to argue over whether the war on terror is a military or police problem. It is both--depending on the strength of the enemy. It is folly to use police tactics for the military problem. It is equal folly to use military tactics for police problems.
In Iraq, we are hopefully in a transition period to when it is purely a police problem and not a military problem. But it remains a serious problem that could get worse if we let up the pressure.
