WILLisms.com: Keep Despair Alive!

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Keep Despair Alive!

One of the articles of faith for those pining for America's defeat in Iraq is that the success of the tribal awakening movement in Anbar province cannot possibly, ever, be reproduced anywhere else in Iraq.

We should believe this, I suppose, because every leftist who starts blogging is instantly granted divine insight into the complexities of Iraqi politics, thousands of miles away. You know, the same people who have been telling us we have already lost in Iraq.

Well lo and behold, perhaps the Juan Cole wannabes don't know a damn thing about Iraq:

The tribal movement begun in Anbar has spread throughout central Iraq, as thousands of Sunnis have either volunteered to join the Iraqi Security Forces or formed local defense groups under Iraqi government and coalition auspices. These "concerned citizens" groups springing up throughout central Iraq have not been previously observed on this scale in the country. They permit U.S. and Iraqi forces to hold territory they have cleared more effectively. The volunteers who make up these groups, recruited and deployed in their own neighborhoods, have incentives to protect their families and communities. They are not independent militias, however. They are partnered with Iraqi Security Forces and coalition forces.
The Baqubah Guardians, one such group, recently helped the Iraqi police in that city fight off al Qaeda insurgents until coalition helicopters arrived. The Taji Neighborhood Watch association searched hundreds of homes for weapons caches. Iraq has hitherto lacked a local policing initiative, relying instead on national and regional models. The concerned-citizen groups are filling this gap while the U.S. and the Iraqi governments work to expand and improve the Iraqi Security Forces that many of these volunteers hope to join.

I am sure the defeatocrats will explain this away with all the expert authority they have displayed thus far. They need to. They have bet the whole farm on defeat, and so they need to chant to themselves "keep despair alive!"

Posted by Ken McCracken · 9 September 2007 01:07 PM

Comments

The "pull out now" crowd should welcome this news. It means that the Iraqis are taking more of a role in their own security and fighting against the bad guys, which would allow us to start pulling some troops out.

The trouble, of course, is that this development may help America under George W. Bush win this war, something that the anti-war crowd cannot tolerate.

Posted by: Bigfoot at September 9, 2007 04:10 PM

Oh yes, victory, the horror!

Posted by: Ken McCacken at September 9, 2007 04:12 PM

So does that mean the anti-war people are really just anti-GWBush and really are for the war?

Posted by: zsa zsa at September 9, 2007 05:30 PM

If it were Bill Clinton's war, I think the left would be telling us that it is the greatest military success since WWII.

Posted by: Ken McCacken at September 9, 2007 07:20 PM

Hmmm...I think the defeatocrats could support Clinton's interventions in Bosnia, Haiti because they were under international/European auspices and did not directly benefit the US. It's beyond the pale to these people fight a war that might even be indirectly in the interests of the US. That would be, they'd tell us, naked imperialism.

Posted by: El Jefe Maximo at September 11, 2007 12:13 PM