Maliki on Al Qaeda: “We Defeated Them”

This should be page 1 headline of every American newspaper but, alas, leave it to the Brits:al-maliki-victory-walk.jpg

From The Sunday Times
July 6, 2008

Iraqis lead final purge of Al-Qaeda
By Marie Colvin in Mosul

American and Iraqi forces are driving Al-Qaeda in Iraq out of its last redoubt in the north of the country in the culmination of one of the most spectacular victories of the war on terror.

After being forced from its strongholds in the west and centre of Iraq in the past two years, Al-Qaeda’s dwindling band of fighters has made a defiant “last stand” in the northern city of Mosul.

A huge operation to crush the 1,200 fighters who remained from a terrorist force once estimated at more than 12,000 began on May 10.

Operation Lion’s Roar, in which the Iraqi army combined forces with the Americans’ 3rd Armoured Cavalry Regiment, has already resulted in the death of Abu Khalaf, the Al-Qaeda leader, and the capture of more than 1,000 suspects.

The group has been reduced to hit-and-run attacks, including one that killed two off-duty policemen yesterday, and sporadic bombings aimed at killing large numbers of officials and civilians.

Last Friday I joined the 2nd Iraqi Division as it supported local police in a house-to-house search for one such bomb after intelligence pointed to a large explosion today.

Even in the district of Zanjali, previously a hotbed of the insurgency, it was possible to accompany an Iraqi colonel on foot through streets of breeze-block houses studded with bullet holes. Hundreds of houses were searched without resistance but no bomb was found, only 60kg of explosives.

American and Iraqi leaders believe that while it would be premature to write off Al-Qaeda in Iraq, the Sunni group has lost control of its last urban base in Mosul and its remnants have been largely driven into the countryside to the south.

Nouri al-Maliki, Iraq’s prime minister, who has also led a crackdown on the Shi’ite Mahdi Army in Basra and Baghdad in recent months, claimed yesterday that his government had “defeated” terrorism.

“They were intending to besiege Baghdad and control it,” Maliki said. “But thanks to the will of the tribes, security forces, army and all Iraqis, we defeated them.”

The number of foreign fighters coming over the border from Syria to bolster Al-Qaeda’s numbers is thought to have declined to as few as 20 a month, compared with 120 a month at its peak.

Brigadier General Abdullah Abdul, a senior Iraqi commander, said: “We’ve limited their movements with check-points. They are doing small attacks and trying big ones, but they’re mostly not succeeding.”

Major-General Mark Hertling, American commander in the north, said: “I think we’re at the irreversible point.”

The Dems Employ Soviet Propaganda Tactics and Have Become the Party of Defeat

David Horowitz and Ben Johnson have written the book the Dems deserve: Party of Defeat.party-of-defeat.jpg

In an excellent review at NRO, Andy McArthy observes that it was the Clinton/Gore administration who made regime change in Iraq official American policy. But after the invasion, the Dems flipped:

So why the treacherous flip-flop? In an ad horrendum indictment that piles fact onto sordid fact, Messrs. Horowitz and Johnson convincingly demonstrate that the modern Democrat leadership is singularly dedicated to delegitimizing and thus destroying the Bush presidency. Having calculated this political strategy, they are heedless of the fact that their tireless opposition, distortion, and propaganda can only lead to the defeat of the United States in what the authors aptly call the war with Islamofascism. In fact, many in the hard Left desire just that outcome. With both Bush and the America that he symbolizes as their targets, no betrayal is off the table.

David Horowitz, of course, is among the most gifted and consequential writers in the conservative movement — particularly insightful when diagnosing the Left’s bare-knuckles, will-to-power arsenal because he came of age in the radical orb. Ben Johnson is the managing editor of the feisty Frontpage Magazine, which is published online daily by Horowitz’s Freedom Center. In Party of Defeat, they recount “unprecedented attacks on an American president and a war in progress.” Describing and documenting the thrall in which the radical Left now holds the Democratic Party, the authors forcefully argue that the resulting “house divided” may lack the unity of national purpose necessary to defeat the perilous threat of jihadism.

The descent of a great political party — one whose determined patriotism was critical to the nation’s victory over Nazi Germany and imperial Japan — has been as predictable as it is disheartening. Many of today’s prominent Leftists were, in the sixties and seventies, heavily influenced by Soviet practices. The authors note that Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa, the highest Soviet intelligence official to defect to the West, has explained that “[s]owing the seeds of anti-Americanism by discrediting the American president was one of the main tasks” of his office. A president cannot rally the public to any great national cause if he becomes the object of distrust and ridicule. Propaganda campaigns toward that end were a Soviet priority.

And so it has been with President Bush. The authors recount that as the 2000 election controversy raged in Florida, Jesse Jackson thundered, “We will delegitimize Bush, discredit him, do whatever it takes but never accept him.” In short, the president’s ascendancy was bastardized from the start, long before 9/11 and Bush’s vigorous response to it gave vent to all the Left’s Vietnam-ized predispositions against the use of American power to further American purposes.

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Iraq: Victory is in Sight

Fred and Kim Kagan on How Prime Minister Maliki Pacified Iraq in the WSJ:

How Prime Minister Maliki Pacified Iraq
By KIMBERLY KAGAN and FREDERICK W. KAGAN
June 10, 2008; Page A17

America is very close to succeeding in Iraq. The “near-strategic defeat” of al Qaeda in Iraq described by CIA Director Michael Hayden last month in the Washington Post has been followed by the victory of the Iraqi government’s security forces over illegal Shiite militias, including Iranian-backed Special Groups. The enemies of Iraq and America now cling desperately to their last bastions, while the political process builds momentum.1203383094-smalliraq.jpg

These tremendous gains remain fragile and could be lost to skillful enemy action, or errors in Baghdad or Washington. But where the U.S. was unequivocally losing in Iraq at the end of 2006, we are just as unequivocally winning today.

By February 2008, America and its partners accomplished a series of tasks thought to be impossible. The Sunni Arab insurgency and al Qaeda in Iraq were defeated in Anbar, Diyala and Baghdad provinces, and the remaining leaders and fighters clung to their last urban outpost in Mosul. The Iraqi government passed all but one of the “benchmark” laws (the hydrocarbon law being the exception, but its purpose is now largely accomplished through the budget) and was integrating grass-roots reconciliation with central political progress. The sectarian civil war had ended.

Meanwhile, the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF), swelled by 100,000 new recruits in 2007, was fighting hard and skillfully throughout Iraq. The Shiite-led government was showing an increasing willingness to use its forces even against Shiite militias. The announcement that provincial elections would be held by year’s end galvanized political movements across the country, focusing Iraq’s leaders on the need to get more votes rather than more guns.

Three main challenges to security and political progress remained: clearing al Qaeda out of Mosul; bringing Basra under the Iraqi government’s control; and eliminating the Special Groups safe havens in Sadr City. It seemed then that these tasks would require enormous effort, entail great loss of life, and take the rest of the year or more. Instead, the Iraqi government accomplished them within a few months.

- Mosul: After losing in central Iraq, remnants of al Qaeda and Baathist insurgents were driven north. These groups started to reconstitute in Mosul as the last large urban area open to them. Mosul also contained financial networks that had funded the insurgency, was a waypoint for foreign fighters infiltrating from Syria, and has ethno-sectarian fault lines that al Qaeda sought to exploit.

The Iraqi government responded by forming the Ninewah Operations Command early in 2008, concentrating forces around Mosul, and preparing for a major clearing operation. In February, the ISF cleared the neighborhoods of Palestine and Sumer, two key al Qaeda safe havens.

In the meantime, American forces conducted numerous raids against the terrorist network, netting hundreds of key individuals. The ISF launched Operation Lion’s Roar on May 10. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki visited Mosul on May 14, and the ISF began Operation Mother of Two Springs shortly thereafter.

The results have been dramatic. Enemy attacks fell from an average of 40 per day in the first week of May to between four and six per day in the following two weeks. Coalition forces have captured or killed the al-Qaeda emirs of Mosul, Southeast Mosul, Ninewah Province and much of their networks.

Mr. Maliki announced a $100 million reconstruction package for Mosul on May 17 and dispatched an envoy on May 29 to oversee the distribution of funds. Security progress was made possible in part by the enrollment of 1,000 former members of the Iraqi Army. They were part of the revision of the de-Baathification policy legislated by the Iraqi Parliament earlier in the year.

- Basra: Al Qaeda’s defeat in 2007 exposed Iranian-backed Special Groups and Shiite militias as the most important sources of violence and casualties. The Maliki government had shown its willingness to target Sunni insurgents, but many feared it would not challenge Iran’s proxies and the Sadrist militias within which they functioned. Basra, in particular, seemed an almost insurmountable problem following the withdrawal of British combat forces from the city. This left Iraq’s second-largest city (and only port) in the hands of rival militias.

Iraqi and American commanders began planning for a gradual effort to retake the city. Mr. Maliki decided not to wait. Read the rest of this post »

We Went into Iraq for the Right Reasons . . . .

Fouad Ajami, professor of international studies at Johns Hopkins University, reminds us today in the WSJ “Why We Went to Iraq”:

Why We Went to Iraq
By FOUAD AJAMI
June 4, 2008

Of all that has been written about the play of things in Iraq, nothing that I have seen approximates the truth of what our ambassador to Baghdad, Ryan Crocker, recently said of this war: “In the end, how we leave and what we leave behind will be more important than how we came.”

. . . (After 9/11) [t]he nation was gripped by legitimate concern over gathering dangers in the aftermath of 9/11. Kabul and the war against the Taliban had not sufficed, for those were Arabs who struck America on 9/11. A war of deterrence had to be waged against Arab radicalism, and Saddam Hussein had drawn the short straw. He had not ducked, he had not scurried for cover. He openly mocked America’s grief, taunted its power.

We don’t need to overwork the stereotype that Arabs understand and respond to the logic of force, but this is a region sensitive to the wind, and to the will of outside powers. Before America struck into Iraq, a mere 18 months after 9/11, there had been glee in the Arab world, a sense that America had gotten its comeuppance. There were regimes hunkering down, feigning friendship with America while aiding and abetting the forces of terror.

Liberal opinion in America and Europe may have scoffed when President Bush drew a strict moral line between order and radicalism – he even inserted into the political vocabulary the unfashionable notion of evil – but this sort of clarity is in the nature of things in that Greater Middle East. It is in categories of good and evil that men and women in those lands describe their world. The unyielding campaign waged by this president made a deep impression on them.

Nowadays, we hear many who have never had a kind word to say about the Iraq War pronounce on the retreat of the jihadists. It is as though the Islamists had gone back to their texts and returned with second thoughts about their violent utopia. It is as though the financiers and the “charities” that aided the terror had reconsidered their loyalties and opted out of that sly, cynical trade. Nothing could be further from the truth. If Islamism is on the ropes, if the regimes in the saddle in key Arab states now show greater resolve in taking on the forces of radicalism, no small credit ought to be given to this American project in Iraq.

We should give the “theorists” of terror their due and read them with some discernment. To a man, they have told us that they have been bloodied in Iraq, that they have been surprised by the stoicism of the Americans, by the staying power of the Bush administration.

There is no way of convincing a certain segment of opinion that there are indeed wars of “necessity.” A case can always be made that an aggressor ought to be given what he seeks, that the costs of war are prohibitively high when measured against the murky ways of peace and of daily life.

“Wars are not self-starting,” the noted philosopher Michael Walzer wrote in his seminal book, “Just and Unjust Wars.” “They may ‘break out,’ like an accidental fire, under conditions difficult to analyze and where the attribution of responsibility seems impossible. But usually they are more like arson than accident: war has human agents as well as human victims.”

Fair enough. In the narrow sense of command and power, this war in Iraq is Mr. Bush’s war. But it is an evasion of responsibility to leave this war at his doorstep. This was a war fought with congressional authorization, with the warrant of popular acceptance, and the sanction of United Nations resolutions which called for Iraq’s disarmament. It is the political good fortune (in the world of Democratic Party activists) that Sen. Barack Obama was spared the burden of a vote in the United States Senate to authorize the war. By his telling, he would have us believe that he would have cast a vote against it. But there is no sure way of knowing whether he would have stood up to the wind.

With the luxury of hindsight, the critics of the war now depict the arguments made for it as a case of manipulation and deceit. This is odd and misplaced: The claims about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction were to prove incorrect, but they were made in good faith.

It is also obtuse and willful to depict in dark colors the effort made to “sell” the war. Read the rest of this post »

British Commander: The Taliban Has Been Decapitated in Afghanistan

More good news in the war on terror. Predator drones–and Coalition forces–are decapitating the Taliban in Afghanistan:

soldier-patrol-lash_675469c.jpg

A member of 2 Scots acquires a personal escort as he patrols the town of Lashkar Gah, in Helmand province.

Afghan insurgents ‘on brink of defeat’
By Thomas Harding in Lashkar Gah
Last Updated: 10:31PM BST 01/06/2008

Missions by special forces and air strikes by unmanned drones have “decapitated” the Taliban and brought the war in Afghanistan to a “tipping point”, the commander of British forces has said.

The new “precise, surgical” tactics have killed scores of insurgent leaders and made it extremely difficult for Pakistan-based Taliban leaders to prosecute the campaign, according to Brig Mark Carleton-Smith.

In the past two years an estimated 7,000 Taliban have been killed, the majority in southern and eastern Afghanistan. But it is the “very effective targeted decapitation operations” that have removed “several echelons of commanders”.

This in turn has left the insurgents on the brink of defeat, the head of Task Force Helmand said . . . .

Even the WaPo Admits that Iraq Has Turned Around

How is winning a war–the most dominant news story of the last 5 years–relegated to Section B?siren.gif

The Iraqi Upturn
Don’t look now, but the U.S.-backed government and army may be winning the war.
Sunday, June 1, 2008; B06

THERE’S BEEN a relative lull in news coverage and debate about Iraq in recent weeks — which is odd, because May could turn out to have been one of the most important months of the war. While Washington’s attention has been fixed elsewhere, military analysts have watched with astonishment as the Iraqi government and army have gained control for the first time of the port city of Basra and the sprawling Baghdad neighborhood of Sadr City, routing the Shiite militias that have ruled them for years and sending key militants scurrying to Iran. At the same time, Iraqi and U.S. forces have pushed forward with a long-promised offensive in Mosul, the last urban refuge of al-Qaeda. So many of its leaders have now been captured or killed that U.S. Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker, renowned for his cautious assessments, said that the terrorists have “never been closer to defeat than they are now.”

Iraq passed a turning point last fall when the U.S. counterinsurgency campaign launched in early 2007 produced a dramatic drop in violence and quelled the incipient sectarian war between Sunnis and Shiites. Now, another tipping point may be near, one that sees the Iraqi government and army restoring order in almost all of the country, dispersing both rival militias and the Iranian-trained “special groups” that have used them as cover to wage war against Americans. It is — of course — too early to celebrate; though now in disarray, the Mahdi Army of Moqtada al-Sadr could still regroup, and Iran will almost certainly seek to stir up new violence before the U.S. and Iraqi elections this fall. Still, the rapidly improving conditions should allow U.S. commanders to make some welcome adjustments — and it ought to mandate an already-overdue rethinking by the “this-war-is-lost” caucus in Washington, including Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.).

Gen. David H. Petraeus signaled one adjustment in recent testimony to Congress, saying that he would probably recommend troop reductions in the fall going beyond the ongoing pullback of the five “surge” brigades deployed last year. Gen. Petraeus pointed out that attacks in Iraq hit a four-year low in mid-May and that Iraqi forces were finally taking the lead in combat and on multiple fronts at once — something that was inconceivable a year ago. As a result the Iraqi government of Nouri al-Maliki now has “unparalleled” public support, as Gen. Petraeus put it, and U.S. casualties are dropping sharply. Eighteen American soldiers died in May, the lowest total of the war and an 86 percent drop from the 126 who died in May 2007.

If the positive trends continue, proponents of withdrawing most U.S. troops, such as Mr. Obama, might be able to responsibly carry out further pullouts next year. Still, the likely Democratic nominee needs a plan for Iraq based on sustaining an improving situation, rather than abandoning a failed enterprise. That will mean tying withdrawals to the evolution of the Iraqi army and government, rather than an arbitrary timetable; Iraq’s 2009 elections will be crucial. It also should mean providing enough troops and air power to continue backing up Iraqi army operations such as those in Basra and Sadr City. When Mr. Obama floated his strategy for Iraq last year, the United States appeared doomed to defeat. Now he needs a plan for success.

Why all the advice for Obama? Hmmm.

Ralph Peters: The Defeatists Want to Hand Al Qaeda a Victory it Has Already Lost

Ralph Peters takes the defeatists like Obama and Clinton to task with the facts of war and then concludes:

. . . If we nonetheless quit Iraq in 2009, the defeated remnants of al Qaeda will be able to declare victory, after all. The organization will be able to re-launch itself as the great Muslim victor over the Great Satan. We’ll have thrown away a potentially decisive triumph and revived the fortunes of the fanatics who brought us 9/11.

And the above only detailed the defeat of al Qaeda. Far more is happening in Iraq, all of it good: Muqtada al-Sadr and his thugs have suffered a series of lopsided defeats; Muqtada’s hiding in Iran, afraid to return; a democratically elected government has finally taken charge in Baghdad - and gained enormously in popularity.

Iraqis look forward to the next round of elections (to the dismay of every Persian Gulf autocracy). Crucial legislation has been refined, passed and implemented. Iraq’s economy is booming - and its government has begun paying its own way.

Want more good news? Iran has failed in its bid to take control of Iraq. And our military leaders are drawing down our troop levels according to a sensible plan, with the prospect of more troop cuts to come.

What don’t the critics like? Democracy? The defeat of al Qaeda? Muslims turning to the US military for help? Troop cuts? The dramatically improved human-rights situation? What’s the problem here?

The answer’s simple: Admitting that they’ve been mistaken about Iraq guts the left’s argument for political entitlement. If the otherwise deplorable Bush administration somehow got this one right, it means the left got another big one wrong.

So be prepared for frequent time-machine trips until November. The encouraging reality of today’s Iraq will go ignored in favor of an endless mantra of “Al Qaeda wasn’t there in 2003 . . .”

The bottom line? Al Qaeda let the war’s opponents down.

Bishop of Rochester: Collapse of Christianity has Wrecked British Society and Islam is Filling the Void

Of course, it would take a non-British born (Pakistani) bishop of the Church of England to point out the obvious:
archbishop-nazir-ali.jpg

Bishop says collapse of Christianity is wrecking British society - and Islam
is filling the void

By Sean Poulter and Niall Firth
Last updated at 10:17 AM on 29th May 2008

Accusation: Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali claims radical Islam is filling the moral vacuum left by the decline in Christian virtues

The collapse of Christianity has wrecked British society, a leading Church of England bishop declared yesterday.

It has destroyed family life and left the country defenceless against the rise of radical Islam in a moral and spiritual vacuum.

In a lacerating attack on liberal values, the Right Reverend Michael Nazir-Ali, the Bishop of Rochester, said the country was mired in a doctrine of ‘endless self-indulgence’ that had brought an explosion in public violence and binge-drinking.

In a blow to Gordon Brown, he mocked the ’scramblings and scratchings’ of politicians who try to cast new British values such as respect and tolerance.

The Pakistani-born bishop dated the downfall of Christianity from the ’social and sexual revolution’ of the 1960s.

He said Church leaders had capitulated to Marxist revolutionary thinking and quoted an academic who blames the loss of ‘faith and piety among women’ for the steep decline in Christian worship.

Dr Nazir-Ali said the ‘ newfangled and insecurely founded’ doctrine of multiculturalism has left immigrant communities ’segregated, living parallel lives’.

Christian values of human dignity, equality and freedom could be lost as the way is left open for the advance of brands of Islam that do not respect Western values.

The Bishopric of Rochester is one of the ten most powerful positions in the Church of England.

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Finally: The WaPo Reports That Al Qaeda is On the Run

It took the CIA director himself to say it in black and white, but the Washington Post is reporting that al Qaeda has been defeated in Iraq:1203383094-smalliraq.jpg

U.S. Cites Big Gains Against Al-Qaeda
Group Is Facing Setbacks Globally, CIA Chief Says
By Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, May 30, 2008; A01

Less than a year after his agency warned of new threats from a resurgent al-Qaeda, CIA Director Michael V. Hayden now portrays the terrorist movement as essentially defeated in Iraq and Saudi Arabia and on the defensive throughout much of the rest of the world, including in its presumed haven along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

In a strikingly upbeat assessment, the CIA chief cited major gains against al-Qaeda’s allies in the Middle East and an increasingly successful campaign to destabilize the group’s core leadership.

While cautioning that al-Qaeda remains a serious threat, Hayden said Osama bin Laden is losing the battle for hearts and minds in the Islamic world and has largely forfeited his ability to exploit the Iraq war to recruit adherents. Two years ago, a CIA study concluded that the U.S.-led war had become a propaganda and marketing bonanza for al-Qaeda, generating cash donations and legions of volunteers.

All that has changed, Hayden said in an interview with The Washington Post this week that coincided with the start of his third year at the helm of the CIA.

“On balance, we are doing pretty well,”
he said, ticking down a list of accomplishments: “Near strategic defeat of al-Qaeda in Iraq. Near strategic defeat for al-Qaeda in Saudi Arabia. Significant setbacks for al-Qaeda globally — and here I’m going to use the word ‘ideologically’ — as a lot of the Islamic world pushes back on their form of Islam,” he said.

The sense of shifting tides in the terrorism fight is shared by a number of terrorism experts, though some caution that it is too early to tell whether the gains are permanent. Some credit Hayden and other U.S. intelligence leaders for going on the offensive against al-Qaeda in the area along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, where the tempo of Predator strikes has dramatically increased from previous years. But analysts say the United States has caught some breaks in the past year, benefiting from improved conditions in Iraq, as well as strategic blunders by al-Qaeda that have cut into its support base.

“One of the lessons we can draw from the past two years is that al-Qaeda is its own worst enemy,”
said Robert Grenier, a former top CIA counterterrorism official who is now managing director of Kroll, a risk consulting firm. “Where they have succeeded initially, they very quickly discredit themselves.”

Others warned that al-Qaeda remains capable of catastrophic attacks and may be even more determined to stage a major strike to prove its relevance. “Al-Qaeda’s obituary has been written far too often in the past few years for anyone to declare victory,” said Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at Georgetown University. “I agree that there has been progress. But we’re indisputably up against a very resilient and implacable enemy.”

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Are We Safer?

The facts reveal that the answer to that question is a resounding “Yes!”twin-towers.JPG

From Powerline:

On the stump, Barack Obama usually concludes his comments on Iraq by saying, “and it hasn’t made us safer.” It is an article of faith on the left that nothing the Bush administration has done has enhanced our security, and, on the contrary, its various alleged blunders have only contributed to the number of jihadists who want to attack us.

Empirically, however, it seems beyond dispute that something has made us safer since 2001. Over the course of the Bush administration, successful attacks on the United States and its interests overseas have dwindled to virtually nothing.

Some perspective here is required. While most Americans may not have been paying attention, a considerable number of terrorist attacks on America and American interests abroad were launched from the 1980s forward, too many of which were successful. What follows is a partial history:

1988
February: Marine Corps Lt. Colonel Higgens, Chief of the U.N. Truce Force, was kidnapped and murdered by Hezbollah.

December: Pan Am flight 103 from London to New York was blown up over Scotland, killing 270 people, including 35 from Syracuse University and a number of American military personnel.

1991
November: American University in Beirut bombed.

1993
January: A Pakistani terrorist opened fire outside CIA headquarters, killing two agents and wounding three.

February: World Trade Center bombed, killing six and injuring more than 1,000.

1995
January: Operation Bojinka, Osama bin Laden’s plan to blow up 12 airliners over the Pacific Ocean, discovered.

November: Five Americans killed in attack on a U.S. Army office in Saudi Arabia.

1996
June: Truck bomb at Khobar Towers kills 19 American servicemen and injures 240.

June: Terrorist opens fire at top of Empire State Building, killing one.

1997
February: Palestinian opens fire at top of Empire State Building, killing one and wounding more than a dozen.

November: Terrorists murder four American oil company employees in Pakistan.

1998
January: U.S. Embassy in Peru bombed.

August: Simultaneous bomb attacks on U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania killed more than 300 people and injured over 5,000.

1999
October: Egypt Air flight 990 crashed off the coast of Massachusetts, killing 100 Americans among the more than 200 on board; the pilot yelled “Allahu Akbar!” as he steered the airplane into the ocean.

2000
October: A suicide boat exploded next to the U.S.S. Cole, killing 17 American sailors and injuring 39.

2001
September: Terrorists with four hijacked airplanes kill around 3,000 Americans in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.

December: Richard Reid, the “shoe bomber,” tries to blow up a transatlantic flight, but is stopped by passengers.

The September 11 attack was a propaganda triumph for al Qaeda, celebrated by a dismaying number of Muslims around the world. Everyone expected that it would draw more Muslims to bin Laden’s cause and that more such attacks would follow. In fact, though, what happened was quite different: the pace of successful jihadist attacks against the United States slowed, decelerated further after the onset of the Iraq war, and has now dwindled to essentially zero. Here is the record:

2002
October: Diplomat Laurence Foley murdered in Jordan, in an operation planned, directed and financed by Zarqawi in Iraq, perhaps with the complicity of Saddam’s government.

2003
May: Suicide bombers killed 10 Americans, and killed and wounded many others, at housing compounds for westerners in Saudi Arabia.

October: More bombings of United States housing compounds in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia killed 26 and injured 160.

2004
There were no successful attacks inside the United States or against American interests abroad.

2005
There were no successful attacks inside the United States or against American interests abroad.

2006
There were no successful attacks inside the United States or against American interests abroad.

2007
There were no successful attacks inside the United States or against American interests abroad.

2008
So far, there have been no successful attacks inside the United States or against American interests abroad.

Read the rest of this post »