Austin Bay’s reporting from Iraq for the Weekly Standard discusses various end-states to the current conflict, but more interesting is his placing the conflict in its strategic context:

I expected al Qaeda or its avatars to show up in Iraq–in fact, that’s one of the sotto voce goals for waging war in the heart of the Middle East, to fight Islamofascism on its home turf. Prior to 9/11, with little pressure on its hidden network, al Qaeda could take its time to spring a vicious surprise attack–surprise and visionary viciousness being its strengths and the gist of its “asymmetric” challenge to America’s “symmetric” power. “Fear us, America,” was the message, “because al Qaeda chooses the time and place of battle, and when we do you are defenseless.”

The essence of strategic art is to force an enemy to fight on your terms, not his, and ideally in a fight he cannot refuse. The U.S.-led attack on Iraq changed al Qaeda’s battlefield. Sunni-extremist al Qaeda has had to fight in a predominantly Shia country. Arab elitists in al Qaeda snubbed the Afghans and ticked them off; Kurds know the feeling.

Zarqawi’s al Qaeda clan accepted the battle. Zarqawi’s network has been hit and hit hard. We’ve learned a lot about al Qaeda funding and recruiting, but Zarqawi hasn’t been destroyed. Something that has been destroyed is the notion that al Qaeda’s extremism dominates Islam. The idea that waging jihad against the West is easy has also been exposed as a lie.

“The essence of strategic art is to force an enemy to fight on your terms, not his, in a fight he cannot refuse.” That’s really good; and that’s what we’ve done.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 27th, 2004 at 6:34 pm and is filed under General, War. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.