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The Battle for Our Will
Knowing they can not defeat us militarily, Al Qaeda continues to try and defeat the national will–aided and abetted, of course, by Harry, Nancy, & Co. Knowing that each bombing will receive maximum media coverage, AQI has ratcheted up the violence in Iraq.
As Fred Kagan and William Kristol write over at The Weekly Standard, the terrorists are counting on winning the battle of perceptions, the perception of who is winning:
Last week, a group of tribal leaders in Salah-ad-Din, the mostly Sunni province due north of Baghdad, agreed to work with the Iraqi government and U.S. forces against al Qaeda. Then al Qaeda destroyed the two remaining minarets of the al-Askariya mosque in Samarra, a city in the province. Coincidence? Perhaps. But al Qaeda is clearly taking a page from the Viet Cong’s book. The terrorists have been mounting a slow-motion Tet offensive of spectacular attacks on markets, bridges, and mosques, knowing that the media report each such attack as an American defeat. The fact is that al Qaeda is steadily losing its grip in Iraq, and these attacks are alienating its erstwhile Iraqi supporters. But the terrorists are counting on sapping our will as the VC did, and persuading America to choose to lose a war it could win.
The Surge is working but AQI is engaged in a counter-surge against our will. They–and Harry Reid–are trying to convince us that we have lost when it is they who are losing:
But real progress has already been made in the war against Al Qaeda in Iraq, and the terrorists know it. That’s why they’re surging against our surge, and why they are attempting to convince us that we have lost when it is they who are losing. But surely our political leaders have enough sense, and enough courage, not to believe enemy propaganda. We believed it once before, in 1968, in circumstances far less dangerous and far less consequential for our well-being than the present. Let’s not make that grave mistake again.
Help get the truth out: we are winning. The Surge is working. Al Qaeda is on the run.
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