So says Gen. Jones, who would seem to be in an excellent position to know. Would it be too much to ask for the news crews to note this fact every time the White House says that if we leave Iraq AQI will take over the country, or that those we are fighting will follow Americans home?
Posted by armand at September 8, 2007 06:54 PM | TrackBack | Posted to IraqA in math, but how are you in social intelligence, Bro? Think of a school class, typically might have one bully, right? But that one bully can exert a bunch of influence if no one stands up to them. In Iraq, when native Iraqis see their brothers and sisters chopped into pieces having their faces peeled off, this can have a lot of influence. People don't want it to happen to them, so they act out of fear unless they have a sense someone will protect them. If you'll recall, one fifieth of one fiftieth of one fiftieth of one fiftieth of one fifth of all the people in America somehow managed to kill a few thousand people six years ago this week. Are you going to be one to underestimate them based on their number?
Posted by: Morris at September 9, 2007 02:21 AM | PERMALINKMorris this isn't an issue of 2% of Iraqis being in AQI, it's 2% of our adversaries being AQI. And those 98% are already doing really, really bad and nasty things. So no, when it comes to being worried about who's doing what - I'm more worried about 98 people attacking me than 2.
Though of course what you write is a nice little summary of why we should be able to pull up stakes and leave many Sunni areas - b/c the Sunnis themselves are perfectly happy to fight "bully" AQI, and have been doing so. There's a ton more of them than there are of AQI, and there's no reason to think they can't deal with that.
Posted by: Armand at September 9, 2007 10:39 AM | PERMALINK