An uncredited journalist walked a mile for the Near East's street-roaming fascists this weekend, calling those who have been detonating a handful of car bombs in Iraq every other day "anti-coalition," when an observer not acclimated to certain prescriptions might easily conclude that terrorists were simply trying to kill as many free Iraqis as they could. In a sentence helpfully pruned of imaginative language, another Associated Press reporter described one strike in the "stepped up" "wave," or "surge," or what have you:
A vehicle packed with explosives was driven into a crowd gathered in front of a popular ice cream shop in Baghdad's western al-Shoulah neighborhood Sunday, police Maj. Mousa Abdul Karim said.
Two dozen Iraqis, police and civilians who arrived to help the wounded, were murdered shortly afterwards when a terrorist set off a second car bomb in their midst. A similar two-bomb attack — luring good men to their death — was staged in Tikrit. Whither the destruction of frozen desserts? The terrorists' intent and capabilities were obvious months ago, unchanged since: they cannot assemble as a force and directly assault Iraqi military forces without substantial losses, let alone provoke Allied troops. Work consists of drive-by shootings, bombings and varied campaigns of thuggery against the defenseless or suitably unprepared targets — which would be completely useless if not for the value of reading one's small-time work in globe-spanning headlines three times too large, spelled out under the byline in nervous prose. Iraq's enemies do not stand up well as fighting men. April began with one gang's sorry attempt on the American assignment at Abu Ghraib prison. Just last week a haphazard rocket attack — the natural amalgam of criminal minds and a countryside littered with its erstwhile dictator's weapons — met an American response that, from the list of ordnance used, would be considered overcompensatory for the incineration of a dozen terrorists if it weren't such a stunning reminder of the enemy's limited prospects.
One Oliver Poole of London's Telegraph reports that one of these objectives has been partially met in select parts of the country, like Husaybah in the extreme west and Mosul in the north; where he cites one Marine commander and several letters to editors, respectively, describing the numerical and operative shrinking of Iraqi security forces.
At the moment this is the only claim of its kind and is contradicted by corroborative, if slightly dated, reports. Arthur Chrenkoff's monthly collection of news from Iraq today includes three stories detailing advances made on terrorists in and around Mosul. From two weeks ago, a Marine colonel marveled at precocious Iraqi troops earning their own Area of Operations more swiftly than anticipated, his concern shifting from Iraqi competence to American disengagement. One day later, a reporter assembled evidence of a "waning" terrorist presence in the city, including a measure of increasing citizen participation in their neighborhoods' safekeeping. Three days after that, a soldier's biographical abstract included numbers on enemy activity in Mosul: halved in frequency. Having last tried to square with Iraqi police in January after thirteen straight failures, terrorists slither in alleyways.
Husaybah was the location for an April 12th report on Allied successes, primarily the effective compromise of a border nexus for Syrian aid to terrorists in Iraq. It was here that the enemy was shredded in an attack against the American presence one week after dismal failure at Abu Ghraib. Finally, it was suggested last week that problems with Iraqi forces stem from discontent, not fear. Terror has only occasionally slowed enthusiastic widening of military and law enforcement ranks, ranks which Chrenkoff's news montage attests are diversifying and sharpening in skill and purpose.
Yet fear has been marketed well by the elite press — ring up an online story from this week and you're likely to find an article about attacks in one side of the country matched to a picture of an attack from the opposite side, replete with implications that ministerial haggling has made hardened criminals and terrorists really angry, enough to take a circuitous revenge on those partaking in double-scoop with chocolate syrup. Certainly, the enemy of freedom would have Iraqis forget their long and growing list of victories and sacrifices over the last two years, and knuckle under for another five decades of servitude. And terrorism has its sympathists, only too eager to portray a grotesque concentration of violence on the innocent as a serious challenge to Allied and Iraqi authority.
With January 30th still resonant, Iraqis know that if they can withstand the stabs of murder and terror they will forge an adamantine national character. Dredging three score out of a river could not have reminded them of anything other than Saddam Hussein, the nightmare they escaped; and the wanton butchery dolled up as religious devotion they know to be the sickness wafting from the rot of Arab socialism. Some commentators ascribe reasonable motives to those abetting or supporting gangsterdom in Iraq; those who daily surmount fear know better.
Terrorists will not last for too much longer if they can only hope to gain attention by killing someone, anyone; or if murder and sabotage exacts a steady amount of their number killed or captured by authorities led to them by indignant citizens. For those responsible, the recent downing of a helicopter and apparent slaughter of its single surviving occupant should have been more spectacular than it was. But within days perpetrators were being walked into jail cells, exposed by Iraqis who feared the loss of their rights as men more than their lives. There is a name for a place where horrific crimes are swiftly punished by a government founded on a popular common good: civil society. The stature of terrorism has been hewn another few inches, no matter how powerfully it is received abroad.
BREADTH AND LENGTH: More on the how and why of the enemy's failures against American troops from Chester, while Mohammed considers terrorism's impotence when liberals carry the momentum.