We decided to send to Iraq recon drones and smart missiles for their fledgling air force to hunt jihadis:
The United States is quietly rushing dozens of Hellfire missiles and low-tech surveillance drones to Iraq to help government forces combat an explosion of violence by a Qaeda-backed insurgency that is gaining territory in both western Iraq and neighboring Syria.
I read a while back that our intelligence people are there, too, and the article says the CIA is helping analyze data to focus Iraqi efforts.
It would be nice if some special forces people are around.
It would be really nice if we had some information operations to remind Iraqis that Iran is doing nothing to help Iraqis defeat al Qaeda killings that have put 8,000 Iraqis in graves this year (including almost a thousand security forces).
Help them. Don't despair. Iraqi casualties are nothing compared to what is happening in Syria. So this isn't futile.
And insurgencies and terrorist campaigns can last decades without threatening the state itself. Colombia is finally winning, as I recently noted. And the Philippines is still fighting communist guerrillas without them threatening the state:
The NPA rebellion has been going on since 1969 and left 30,000 dead so far but it’s become increasingly common to have these holiday truces and generally observe them. The leftist rebels are down to about 4,000 gunmen and many of the NPA leaders are now willing to negotiate a peace deal.
The mere fact that insurgents and terrorists still kill in Iraq does not mean Iraq is a failure any more than Chicago city government is a failure because there are murders.
Okay, maybe that's a bad example.
Still, the fact that our enemies don't want to accept defeat as easily as we'd like is no reason for us to accept defeat in mistaken despair.
Work the problem.
