The Twilight of the Insurgency

Three stories mentioned by Arthur Chrenkoff's article in the WSJ of Iraqi civilians taking up the fight against terrorists themselves are more evidence that the insurgency is doomed. When insurgents lose the battle for the hearts and minds of the people they cannot win. The terrorists in Iraq lost this battle when they turned from the militarily suicidal practice of targeting Americans to the politically suicidal practice of targeting Iraqis.

Here's an excerpt from the first account:

Just before noon today, a carpenter named Dhia saw a troop of masked gunmen with grenades coming towards his shop and decided he had had enough.

As the gunmen emerged from their cars, Dhia and his young relatives shouldered their own AK-47's and opened fire, police and witnesses said. In the fierce gun battle that followed, three of the insurgents were killed, and the rest fled just after the police arrived. Two of Dhia's young nephews and a bystander were injured, the police said.

"We attacked them before they attacked us," Dhia, 35, his face still contorted with rage and excitement, said in a brief exchange at his shop a few hours after the battle. He did not give his last name. "We killed three of those who call themselves the mujahedeen. I am waiting for the rest of them to come and we will show them."

Two other fairly recent examples can be found here and here.

Another sign of failure for an insurgency is when it ceases to be indigenous and is forced to rely on alien forces. The presence of so many foreigners among the dead is an indication that popular support among Iraqis for the terrorist effort is waning. Indeed, when the bulk of the adversary is foreign it really is no longer an insurgency, and perhaps it's time for the media to stop referring to it as such. No doubt a lot of the Iraqis who are left among the opposition are thinking that it's time to get out or to cut a deal.