As Drew Tilghman, an Iraq correspondent for Stars and Stripes, recently explained, al Qaeda in Iraq, as of a few months ago, included about 850 full-time fighters, comprising 2% to 5% of the Sunni insurgency. Tilghman quoted a 20-year intelligence veteran and Arabic speaker who has worked with military and intelligence units tracking al-Qaeda inside Iraq saying, “Al-Qaeda in Iraq is a microscopic terrorist organization.”
Two percent might even be on the high end. Gen. James Jones said as recently as September that probably “two percent or fewer of the adversaries that we’re facing in Iraq and that the Iraqis are facing in Iraq are foreign jihadis or AQI affiliates, [and] 98 percent or more are Iraqis fighting amongst Iraqis for the future of Iraq.”
Now, that number might be dropping from 2% to zero — AQI has practically been defeated.
The U.S. military believes it has dealt devastating and perhaps irreversible blows to al-Qaeda in Iraq in recent months, leading some generals to advocate a declaration of victory over the group, which the Bush administration has long described as the most lethal U.S. adversary in Iraq. […]
The deployment of more U.S. and Iraqi forces into AQI strongholds in Anbar province and the Baghdad area, as well as the recruitment of Sunni tribal fighters to combat AQI operatives in those locations, has helped to deprive the militants of a secure base of operations, U.S. military officials said. “They are less and less coordinated, more and more fragmented,” Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, the second-ranking U.S. commander in Iraq, said recently. Describing frayed support structures and supply lines, Odierno estimated that the group’s capabilities have been “degraded” by 60 to 70 percent since the beginning of the year.
Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, head of the Joint Special Operations Command’s operations in Iraq, is the chief promoter of a victory declaration and believes that AQI has been all but eliminated, the military intelligence official said.
“Microscopic” or not, AQI’s defeat is obviously an encouraging development. Of course, there are political consequences.
But as the White House and its military commanders plan the next phase of the war, other officials have cautioned against taking what they see as a premature step that could create strategic and political difficulties for the United States. Such a declaration could fuel criticism that the Iraq conflict has become a civil war in which U.S. combat forces should not be involved.
So, we won’t declare the defeat of a small terrorist group in part because the White House, National Review, and Joe Lieberman’s office might lose a talking point?
Indeed, about a month ago, Sens. John McCain and Joe Lieberman, arguably Bush’s most enthusiastic war cheerleaders, teamed up to write a wildly unpersuasive op-ed in (where else?) the Wall Street Journal. They said, “We must understand that today in Iraq we are fighting and defeating the same terrorist network that attacked on 9/11.”
Even at the time, their claim was simply wrong, a fact they were no doubt aware of. But recent developments clearly complicate matters. If AQI has effectively been routed, it’s that much more difficult for Bush and his allies to insist we stay the course to defeat our 9/11 attackers. Al Qaeda in Iraq is the rallying cry; it’s the raison d’etre of our occupation; it’s the basis for right-wing advertising; it’s the reason congressional Republicans can rationalize voting in lockstep with the White House on every Iraq measure for years.
And if the group is gone, then the reasons for sticking around are that much more elusive. After all, AQI can’t “follow us home” if it no longer exists.