Global News: October 2007 Archives

Faster, Please!: Maybe We're Winning in Iraq

Michael Ledeen looks to counterinsurgency theory to explain the dramatic successes in Anbar, Basra, and elsewhere: "In the early phases of the conflict, the people remain as neutral as they can, simply trying to stay alive. As the war escalates, they are eventually forced to make a choice, to place a bet, and that bet becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. The people have the winning piece on the board: intelligence. Once the Iraqis decided that we were going to win, they provided us with information about the terrorists: who they were, where they were, what they were planning, where their weapons were stashed, and so forth....

"There is a tendency to treat the surge as a mere increase in numbers, but its most important component was the change in doctrine. Instead of keeping too many of our soldiers off the battlefield in remote and heavily fortified mega-bases, we put them into the field. Instead of reacting to the terrorists' initiatives, we went after them. No longer were we going to maintain the polite fiction that we were in Iraq to train the locals so that they could fight the war. Instead, we aggressively engaged our enemies. It was at that point that the Iraqi people placed their decisive bet." (Via Ace.)

Ephemeral Isle: The Habit and the Hijab

A female airport security official wearing a hijab frisks an elderly nun: "The absurdity of airport security in the United States summed up in one image."