Al Qaeda's retreat

Harold Hutchison:

Despite the many brickbats of the media, al Qaeda has been defeated in Iraq, and is now retreating to lick its wounds where it can. If it can. Just over four and a half years, al Qaeda has gone from being the dominant terrorist group in the world to a defeated shell of its former self. In trying to defeat the United States, al Qaeda made three big mistakes: They fought the last information war, they underestimated the American leadership, and they also managed to anger the Iraqi people.

From the moment the United States and al Qaeda began fighting in Afghanistan, the terrorists were looking for a chance to re-create images similar to those of American troops being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu in 1993 or Walter Cronkite calling the Vietnam War a stalemate in 1968. It was hoped that such a moment would cause a dramatic drop in support for the war among the American people and force the United States out of Iraq. It did not happen.

The first problem was that al Qaeda failed to realize just how much the terrain had shifted on the media battlefield, particularly the growth of alternative outlets. In 1993, CNN was the only 24-hour news network. In 1996, two other 24-hour news networks were founded, MSNBC on July 15, and Fox News on October 7. These started to establish competition. After the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, Fox News began pulling ahead of the other two networks, largely because it was taking a position that was seen as being reasonably supportive of the American efforts.

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The third mistake was to wage a campaign of terror against Iraqi civilians. This was intended to intimidate them into at least acquiescing to al Qaeda's presence, if not supporting al Qaeda at all. It didn't work. Instead, as the car bombs went off , and drew CNN headlines in the United States, al Qaeda managed to become more and more unpopular with Iraqis. Even the Arab Sunnis began to view the Americans, who had displaced them from the power they had held under Saddam, as a better option than supporting al Qaeda. Eventually, the Sunnis joined the democratic process and when that happened, al Qaeda's eventual defeat was assured with increasing Sunni participation over three elections in the space of less than a year.

These three mistakes resulted in the defeat of al Qaeda in Iraq, a defeat has left that group largely discredited. Osama bin Laden is now reduced to making audio tapes with grand pronouncements which have little or no likelihood of ever becoming reality, since al Qaeda has no safe havens where they can train new recruits, nor countries willing to support them. In less than five years, al Qaeda has gone from being feared by the world, to little more than a sideshow in the long war that the United States is now fighting.

They lost a long time ago, but they will continue to be a Klu Klux Klan pest for a while. Like coack roaches, they still have teh capacity to make a mess, even though they do not have the capacity to take anything.