Get Zarqawi

[gilliam]

For a moment, focus on the present. Right now, there are three reasons the United States needs to be in Iraq. The most important: to fight al-Qaeda, the leader of the global Militant Islamist movement, the sworn enemy of America and freedom. Wherever al-Qaeda is, Americans must be there, too – with weapons at the ready. And without question, al-Qaeda’s most lethal units are in Iraq, commanded by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

A secondary reason we must stay in Iraq: to do what we can to help prevent the people of that country from again being enslaved and slaughtered by tyrants. Yes, that has proven to be a tougher mission than imagined, much more difficult than toppling Saddam Hussein. “Yes, we did indeed underestimate the ferocity and ruthlessness of the jihadists in Iraq,” says author Christopher Hitchens. “Where, one might inquire, have we not underestimated those forces and their virulence?”

That brings us to a third largely unspoken reason we must stay in Iraq: to learn. The U.S. military is exquisitely equipped to fight last century’s wars. We shed much blood teaching ourselves to overcome German tanks and Japanese kamikazes; we spent much treasure deterring Soviet nuclear missiles. Inconveniently, however, our enemies now fight with Improvised Explosive Devices, suicide bombers, butchers knives, lies and videotape. And they will use Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) should they get their hands on them.

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[Al_Masetti]

In Iraq, we anticipated fighting the Iraqi army. We did not anticipate that the opposition would form up as an “insurgency” instead of fighting as main force units.

So, instead of destroying the Iraqi army in large masses of troops, we are fighting some of them in the context of an “insurgency”.

Of course, large numbers of the Army troops simply went home and Iran and other Muslim countries are supplying “insurgent” fighters.

And, surprising to some, Iraqi’s by the thousands are volunteering to fight the insurgency.

Asymmetric warfare has more than one facet… When indigenous people rally to fight an asymmetric insurgency, then it really puts a new face on the word: “asymmetric”.