Cheer Up … We’re Winning This ‘War On Terror’
Cheer up. We’re winning this War on Terror
Al-Qaeda and the Taleban are in retreat, the surge has worked in Iraq and Islamism is discredited.
Not a bad haul
by Gerard Baker - (Times Online)
“My centre is giving way. My right is in retreat. Situation excellent. I shall attack!”
If only our political leaders and opinion-formers displayed even a hint of the defiant resilience that carried Marshal Foch to victory at the Battle of the Marne. But these days timorous defeatism is on the march. In Britain setbacks in the Afghan war are greeted as harbingers of inevitable defeat. In America, large swaths of the political class continues to insist Iraq is a lost cause. The consensus in much of the West is that the War on Terror is unwinnable.
And yet the evidence is now overwhelming that on all fronts, despite inevitable losses from time to time, it is we who are advancing and the enemy who is in retreat. The current mood on both sides of the Atlantic, in fact, represents a kind of curious inversion of the great French soldier’s dictum: “Success against the Taleban. Enemy giving way in Iraq. Al-Qaeda on the run. Situation dire. Let’s retreat!”
Since it is remarkable how pervasive this pessimism is, it’s worth recapping what has been achieved in the past few years.
Afghanistan has been a signal success. There has been much focus on the latest counter-offensive by the Taleban in the southeast of the country and it would be churlish to minimise the ferocity with which the terrorists are fighting, but it would be much more foolish to understate the scale of the continuing Nato achievement. Establishing a stable government for the whole nation is painstaking work, years in the making. It might never be completed. But that was not the principal objective of the war there.
Until the US-led invasion in 2001, Afghanistan was the cockpit of ascendant Islamist terrorism. Consider the bigger picture. Between 1998 and 2005 there were five big terrorist attacks against Western targets - the bombings of the US embassies in Africa in 1998, the attack on the USS Cole in 2000, 9/11, and the Madrid and London bombings in 2004 and 2005. All owed their success either exclusively or largely to Afghanistan’s status as a training and planning base for al-Qaeda.
In the past three years there has been no attack on anything like that scale. Al-Qaeda has been driven into a state of permanent flight. Its ability to train jihadists has been severely compromised; its financial networks have been ripped apart. Thousands of its activists and enablers have been killed. It’s true that Osama bin Laden’s forces have been regrouping in the border areas of Pakistan but their ability to orchestrate mass terrorism there is severely attenuated. And there are encouraging signs that Pakistanis are starting to take to the offensive against them.
Next time you hear someone say that the war in Afghanistan is an exercise in futility ask them this: do they seriously think that if the US and its allies had not ousted the Taleban and sustained an offensive against them for six years that there would have been no more terrorist attacks in the West? What characterised Islamist terrorism before the Afghan war was increasing sophistication, boldness and terrifying efficiency. What has characterised the terrorist attacks in the past few years has been their crudeness, insignificance and a faintly comical ineptitude (remember Glasgow airport?)
The second great advance in the War on Terror has been in Iraq. There’s no need to recapitulate the disasters of the US-led war from the fall of Saddam Hussein in April 2003 to his execution at the end of 2006. We may never fully make up for three and a half lost years of hubris and incompetence but in the last 18 months the change has been startling.
The “surge”, despite all the doubts and derision at the time, has been a triumph of US military planning and execution. Political progress was slower in coming but is now evident too. The Iraqi leadership has shown great courage and dispatch in extirpating extremists and a growing willingness even to turn on Shia militias. Basra is more peaceful and safer than it has been since before the British moved in. Despite setbacks such as yesterday’s bombings, the streets of Iraq’s cities are calmer and safer than they have been in years. Seventy companies have bid for oil contracts from the Iraqi Government. There are signs of a real political reconciliation that may reach fruition in the election later this year.
The third and perhaps most significant advance of all in the War on Terror is the discrediting of the Islamist creed and its appeal.
This was first of all evident in Iraq, where the head-hacking frenzy of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his associates so alienated the majority of Muslims that it gave rise to the so-called Sunni Awakening that enabled the surge to be so effective.
But it has spread way beyond Iraq. As Lawrence Wright described in an important piece in The New Yorker last month, there is growing disgust not just among moderate Muslims but even among other jihadists at the extremism of the terrorists.
Deeply encouraging has been the widespread revulsion in Muslim communities in Europe - especially in Britain after the 7/7 attacks of three years ago. Some of the biggest intelligence breakthroughs in the past few years have been achieved from former al-Qaeda supporters who have turned against the movement.
There ought to be no surprise here. It’s only their apologists in the Western media who really failed to see the intrinsic evil of Islamists. Those who have had to live with it have never been in much doubt about what it represents. Ask the people of Iran. Or those who fled the horrors of Afghanistan under the Taleban.
This is why we fight. Primarily, of course, to protect ourselves from the immediate threat of terrorist carnage, but also because we know that extending the embrace of a civilisation that liberates everyone makes us all safer.
Every death is an unspeakable tragedy. It’s right that each time a soldier is killed in action we ask why. Was it really worth it?
The right response to the loss of brave souls such as Corporal Sarah Bryant, the first British woman to die in Afghanistan, is not an immediate call for retreat. It is, first of all, pride; a great, deep conviction that it is on such sacrifice that our own freedoms have always rested.
Then, defiance. How foolish is the enemy that it might think our grief is really some prelude to their victory? Finally, confidence. We are prevailing in this struggle. We know it. And everywhere: in Afghanistan, in Iraq, and among Muslims around the world, the enemy knows it too.
Be respectful of others and their opinions. Inflammatory remarks and inane leftist drivel will be deleted. It ain’t about free speech, remember you’re in a private domain. My website, my prerogative.
If you can't handle using your real email address, don't bother posting a comment.
“The current mood on both sides of the Atlantic, in fact, represents a kind of curious inversion of the great French soldier’s dictum: “Success against the Taleban. Enemy giving way in Iraq. Al-Qaeda on the run. Situation dire. Let’s retreat!”
encore un idiot qui n’a pas nettoyé ses oreilles de BS propagande
June 27th, 2008 at 8:29 amas the weeks went on, the autochtone male element happened to show off more “reserved”. The time will not be very long over till the Brit soldiers will be reproached not to be numerous enough, and not placed where they should, though where they are, they are overwhelming. Despite its efforts, the Information Office has more and more hard time to hide the brit “wimped” participation to the strategic organisation.In February 1940 only 10 divisions stay on the french soil, instead of the 25 promissed at the end of 1939 october. Then again these divisions camped far from the german border, in the north, Normandy, and the Atlantic coast. The joke among the troops at the Maginot line was “Did you see the Englishman ?”, afterword translated by the german propaganda : “the Brits offer their “machines”, the Frenchs their chests” or in the french paper “Paris-soir” ” the Brits will fight till the last French”…
… There is more pernicious, the “passe-droit” (pass-right) and the privileges that the expeditionnary Brit corps take for granted, that irritated the Frenchs, that was echoed in all the population strates. On the belgian border the brit commendement allows habitation tickets to its troops without even refering to the local mayors. In Wanquetin, near Arras, the “tommies” live in individual houses, while the french soldiers must sleep in barns cob. Fighting are regular in the cities where both troops have to stay : in Lille, the Mecca for the Brits that are off, where the latters invade dancings, make beer abuses, tighten too narrow the local girls, all that ends in boxing parties with the “continental gitanos”… Anglophoby starts to overwhelme Anglophily. The Frenchs can’t stand anymore the insolent contempting and overwhelming Brits, enough is enough with saccage, roberies, brigandage…
OKiii, the “tommies are brave” MDR =LMAO
June 27th, 2008 at 8:43 amMaybe there is another ‘Awakening’ occurring. American voters are seeing Obama for what he is, a Marxist/Communist and racist that has presented rehashed failed policies of the past who, also, completely lacks the understanding of the world that is needed in the POTUS. Although slow, the truth about the war on terror and specifically the Iraq front is getting though and people realize we are winning despite the obstruction of the left. People are realizing that energy is a big problem that is world-wide and not caused by the companies that produce it but by the obstruction of the left to block increasing the supply domesticaly. People are realizing as much as we all (the whole world) would like to replace oil with something renewable and environmentally friendly there just isn’t an alternative YET. People are realizing that we do not know when that alternative will arrive and we still need to function until we can get to that glorious day that we have a functioning alternative (and, for me, the glorious day that we all can tell OPEC to keep their oil). Keep waking up more people so they can see passed the fog spewing leftists, obstructionists and liberal Democrats.
June 27th, 2008 at 8:54 am
CPLViper
June 27th, 2008 at 9:56 amI’ve been considering that idea for a while now, I really think that it may be that they have or are very close to overplaying their hand. I think it may very well blow up in their face.
yes, and we mustn’t forget the contributions the French have provided to the entire effort. we’d like to thank you for the couple of aircraft that you’ve provided, i don’t think they’ve actually done anything, other than increase the global carbon footprint. thank you for the tents and the chafing dishes. did i miss anything?
June 27th, 2008 at 10:13 amtoo bad the Brit’s haven’t provided anything for the global war on islamo-fascists. other than the blood of their sons and daughters…
TBinSTL (just typical), Phendlin (Death Rattlers)
I am not arguing on the Brit participation in Afghanistan war,
but on the perfidity of the English journalist, as usual, the Brits can’t make a report without making this asertion how the Frenchs are surrending…blah, blah… and how their Anglo-Saxon alliance is brave.
Now, apart the US,who have the biggest caualties there, the Canadians, followed by the Brits, the Frenchs have also had 9 “special force” casualties, behind Spain though, that had 17 soldiers killed ; this is more than the other Nato Nations that participate to this war.
“the Brit’s haven’t provided anything for the global war on islamo-fascists”
too bad that they also release the jihadists in their Court.
June 27th, 2008 at 10:33 amfranchie;
give up on the crappy machine translations. Take some English lessons. You’re obviously (badly) self-taught.
As far as Baker: I’m getting real tired of this meme: “There’s no need to recapitulate the disasters of the US-led war from the fall of Saddam Hussein in April 2003 to his execution at the end of 2006. We may never fully make up for three and a half lost years of hubris and incompetence.”
There’s no need to cede nearly that much to the natterers. There was a long learning curve for the Iraqi public involved, while AQ and JAM taught them just what their version of “power from the barrel of a gun” involved. And the “Awakening” and “Surge” COIN practices were developing and being refined for years before Petraeus et al gathered together “best practices” in the new policy. Google “Capt. Travis Patriquin”, e.g.
June 27th, 2008 at 12:42 pmBrian H, I have a live english course on board,
the problem is that I also learn more “urban” stuffs,(not saying I don’t appreciate it, in the contrary, it’s more imagefull for me)
In that condition, difficult to handle a serious conversation
I agree that the machine translations suck
The other problem with the english language is that we learn the UK’s here, and obviously, it’s a bit different from the American’s.
June 27th, 2008 at 1:46 pm