Thanks for the comment. As usual concerning matters military, I bow to your superior knowledge and wisdom. That said, concerning the question “do you feel any concern,” you betcha.

But maybe not quite in the same way. I see no benefit to the insurgents turning on U.S. forces again. They stand to gain absolutely nothing from doing that. I think that they settled with us because we militarily defeated them. If we can do it once, we can do it again. Perhaps they will see it that way too.

However, I have noted before that this is a high risk approach. As my most recent post indicates (”The Rise of the JAM”), if we do not have the national will to defeat the JAM and take down Sadr just like we have done it with the Sunnis, then there will be no reconciliation in Iraq - no oil deal - no forgiveness - no peace.

Then … we will truly be in the middle of an all-out civil war. The Sunnis are badly outnumbered, but I would not expect them to slink away quietly into the night. They see us as their protector from the JAM right now, and so settling with us was the thing to do.

As best as I can tell and without parsing words too closely, we agree on almost every count, and certainly the most important things.

I didn’t characterize, I merely cited. And again, on the whole I found the analysis informative and insightful, with the exceptions I noted.

I don’t care what his politics are, Nance is just very, very wrong when he says the admin or military ‘refer to all insurgency forces as “Al Qaeda.â€?’ He has to know better. No one has ever confused Sadrists with Qaedists, or characterized the entire Sunni resistance as AQ. That is such an egregious hyperbole that it casts a lot of doubt on anything Nance says. I agree we need to speak to the facts, but serious, un-amateurish discussion needs serious people doing serious analysis, not taking poorly-aimed political potshots. We do no favors to seriousness by ignoring or excusing such antics.

“A couple of thousand al Qaeda in Mesopotamia fighters cannot destabilize a country”

Again, with respect, manifestly they can (and have) if they carry off enough spectacular attacks. You cite the progress in Anbar, but that happened long after the Samarra bombing, widely regarded as the most destabilizing event since the invasion, and the Anbar progress was only cemented with a lot of effort against AQ by US forces.

Al Qaeda almost certainly does not now control more than 10% of the insurgency, and certainly their ideology is failing among Sunnis, but they’re sill a major factor because they’re the only ones carrying out huge, headline-grabbing bombings with massive civilian casualties. Sadrists and other Shia militias use them as political/recruiting fuel, and U.S. Senators and presidential candidates cite these attacks as failures of U.S. policy and reasons we should withdraw.

First, I cite Nance in specific regarding the use of al Qaeda as a surrogate (that is my word, not his). I agree with him. I have read a huge number of MNF press releases over time, and AQI has indeed become a surrogate for clearer communication. Nance’s other positions (e.g., invoking the study group recommendation to “talk” to Iran and Syria) I reject for reasons I outline in the article. Regardless whether someone is characterized by you or me as a “right wing partisan” or “left wing partisan,” it is the truth value of their ideas that merits consideration. The debate should be about ideas, not personalities. Invocation of personalities makes the discussion amateurish rather than serious.

Now to Iraq. Denials to the contrary, a couple of thousand al Qaeda in Mesopotamia fighters cannot destabilize a country (read here, “all on their own”) any more than can a couple of thousand gang members in America, regardless of whether they have explosives. The proof for my position is in what has happened in Anbar.

The terms insurgency and terrorism have been thrown around in the national conversation, but not with precision. But speaking more precisely, the Marines have been fighting both in Anbar. The gun battles in Heet, Haditha, Ramadi, Fallujah, etc., for the better part of three years, have been with indigenous Sunni fighters. Read here: “insurgents.” This has been the part of the fight that has been a classical insurgency, along with our nonkinetic operations.

The Marines have also fought al Qaeda: read here “terrorists.” Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia had heretofore convinced the Sunnis in Anbar that there could be a return to power of the Sunnis (including some ex-Ba’athists). While there has been some internecine warfare, the “terrorists” (who were seen in the role of assisting this Sunni return to power) would NOT HAVE BEEN ABLE to pull off the acts of terror (on the Shi’a) without the acquiescence of the “insurgents.” Period. Tacit approval was necessary.

The proof? Tacit approval is no longer there, the insurgents have turned against the terrorists, and rather than fighting the Marines they are now fighting the terrorists. You will search long to find the last MNF press release of a casualty in Anbar. Bombs are irrelevant when the population doesn’t approve. The population no longer approves, no longer protects, and now they’re gone.

By far and away, the more powerful of the “tribes” in Anbar (not including the U.S.) has all along been the indigenous Iraqi insurgents. Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia will fizzle without the approval of the population. Regarding the sectarian tensions and strife to which you allude, you are correct, and I press that point home in the article. It allowed for there to be the myth of Sunni return to power for so many years following the opening of OIF. But a myth it is, and the Sunnis are figuring that out. Now for the Shi’a. Will they reconcile?

By the way. Not too many hours after publication of this article, an “intel spec” wrote me to say the following: “anybody who thinks that al Qaeda controls more than 10% of the insurgency in Iraq is crazy.”

None of this speaks to the justification for OIF, or to the need to rout al Qaeda, or the strategy we adopt to do so, or the so-called “long war.” Calling the insurgency in Anbar (i.e., the indigenous fighters) for what it was is merely accurate and good science. There is nothing wrong with truth-telling. The Marines have won the hardest fought and most complex counterinsurgency in world history in Anbar. This is a powerful and true story that needs to be told. It wasn’t just a fight against terrorists. It was a classical counterinsurgency too.

With AQI and AAS standing only at several thousand, for a country the size of Iraq, there simply aren’t enough to pull off destabilization of a country. There are more gang members in most medium size American cities than there are al Qaeda in Iraq.

Obviously untrue. American gangs do not load up dumptrucks with artillery shells and set them off in churches and shopping malls. If a single AQ member can kill 10 - 100 people with a massive bomb, that means several thousand AQ could kill hundreds of thousands, if allowed to do so. In a country of 25 million, that is serious destabilization. Additionally, Iraq has sectarian fault lines which AQ exploits. Even a single spectacular AQ attack (like in Samarra) can spark outsized consequences in a country like Iraq — something AQ takes full advantage of.

Also, you approvingly cite Nance here:

by 2007 it wasn’t hard for Washington to make a semantic and rhetorical leap to refer to all insurgency forces as “Al Qaeda.�

That is simply not true, as any simple Google of either admin statements or MNF-I releases will instantly prove, and that fact goes a long way towards establishing Nance as either incredibly misinformed or a dishonest partisan hack (and not a very bright one at that).

Japan and Germany surrendered unconditionally, and I say this while acknowledging that we spent years mopping up in the post war period.

Korea ended with a hot truce.

We left Vietnam after a decade of anti-US collusion between the overt enemy, a well oiled domestic 5th column, and a lack of political resolve to fight war in a war-like manner.(Research General Giap’s words re W. Cronkite.)

The sinuous, symbiotic relationship of Islam and the combatants of the (greater) war we are now fighting makes it almost impossible, if not improbable to separate the issue. (Although those who fear offending Muslims contort wildly in the attempt.) As we speak, Pakistan is one bullet away from granting AQ a well developed arsenal.

Back to my initial question; when all is said and done and we are ready to say that we have accomplished the mission, what does that look like.

Since it’s pretty clear that the new bin Laden message is just a clip from a message that apparently was filmed in 2001 and aired in May of 2002, many people are concluding that the PoS is dead. It makes…