Al Qaeda's recruiting problem

Strategy Page:

The sharp drop in suicide bombings in Iraq is partly due to the decline in foreign al Qaeda volunteers coming into Iraq. The recruiting, mostly in Saudi Arabia and North Africa, preys on the unique social conditions in those areas. Namely, high birth rates and high unemployment. This produces a lot of younger sons who are unemployed, unmarried and face a dim future. So the al Qaeda recruiter, often working out of a local mosque, makes a free trip to Iraq, ending in a glorious death for the cause, sound like a solution. But over the last year, the number of such volunteers has declined from 120 a month, to about 40. The main reason for this is bad news, and some survivors, coming back from Iraq. Not many of these losers make it back, but the word gets on to the Internet, and this has caused quite a commotion on pro-terrorist web sites and message boards. There's also been a sharp drop in pro-terrorist combat videos coming out of Iraq. This is largely due to the death or capture of the people responsible for getting those videos onto the Internet.

No one there wants to admit that al Qaeda has been beaten in Iraq, but the more first-hand accounts that show up, the more convincing the stories are. The truth is this. The al Qaeda volunteers have long been enticed by the prospect of killing American soldiers. That rarely happens, and survivor accounts always make that point, and the fact that al Qaeda is mostly killing Iraqis. Last year, most of the Sunni Arabs turned on al Qaeda, and this has been most difficult for the al Qaeda recruiters to deal with.

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Al Qaeda has suffered a strategic defeat in Iraq and this is just another indication. The Post below on the Reuters story about the attrition in the ranks of the al Qaeda propaganda machine in Iraq is another indicator. The biggest indicator is one the President noted the other day to the skepticism of much of the left wing media, that the Sunnis have rejected al Qaeda. Instead of creating more terrorist as many on the left allege, the war is creating a wave of revulsion to al Qaeda and its tactics of mass murder of noncombatants. The administration and the military need to do a better job of getting this message out. One speech by the President is not enough.