Iraq's rugged western landscape is known to have long served as a gateway for the country's enemies and, as such, is an indelible reminder that the Allies face a regional challenge from neighboring dictatorships whose power ebbs in the face of Baghdad's liberal rise. Attacks on civilians, policemen and soldiers do not comprise a homegrown "rebellion" or a "civil war," as some on both the left and right have suggested. Sunni areas of Iraq are troubled but recalcitrance isn't war; and fear does not make loyalty. While the enemy is certainly factious and disparate, al Qaeda tough Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is by all accounts the most visible enemy leader in the country; and the classification of Iraqi hitmen and gangsters, especially if they be former Ba'athists, deserves scrutiny given their consortion with supposed adversaries. For purposes of division the assassins and saboteurs must be thought as politically incompatible but in operation they are often a single target:
Marines, Sailors and Soldiers from Regimental Combat Team-2, 2nd Marine Division are conducting combat operations in northwestern Al Anbar province. The offensive is aimed at eliminating terrorists and foreign fighters from the area. The operation is currently on the area north of the Euphrates River, in the Al Jazirah Desert. The region is a known smuggling route and sanctuary for foreign fighters.
"Insurgent," "militant," "rebel" and "guerilla" are popular press euphemisms for the enemy. Terrorists are also routinely identified as natives — the more rightfully disgruntled, the better. Last Wednesday, the bomb-laden wretch who murdered dozens was arbitrarily granted Iraqi citizenship by the Associated Press. My skepticism came easily but the journalist attendant to the blast and responsible for the claim is flatly contradicted by two years of reports compiled by those for whom accurate descriptions are essential:
U.S. and Iraqi authorities say suicide drivers are invariably foreign fighters. Officers here said they knew of no documented case in which a suicide attacker turned out to have been an Iraqi.
According to the military, the presence of foreign terrorists has increased, returning us to the motivation for continued attacks against Iraqis, their benefactors and their protectors: nothing so unmistakable and uncomplicated as strongmen's contempt for the living, the hopeful and the free.
THE WAR AGAINST TERROR, INDEED: Rich Lowry provides us, in one excerpt, with a description of the primary role of Islamist authoritarianism in the war against democratic Iraq and the conventionally inconceivable aid and direction from "secular" Ba'athists ruling Syria. Congratulations to the mainstream media for finally publishing what has been obvious all along.