Foreign Fighters Meme
By streiff Posted in War — Comments (53) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
Though the insurgents led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi represent a relatively small number of actual fighters and a small fraction of the entire insurgency, Zarqawi’s organization has taken on an importance much larger than its actual size.
His faction is the most brutal; it achieves the most spectacular media results. In short he has become the face of the insurgency to much of the world and his organization has become a favorite stick with which our nominal allies can beat us.
Read on.
[HT to Bill Roggio for the idea and discussion.]
The outsized importance of the Zarqawi group is purely political and revolves around whether Iraq war serving the ends of the GWOT or whether Iraq is creating a cadre of highly proficient terrorists in the same manner as the CIA/ISI/SIS camps created the afghani who formed the core of the radical islamist movements that belatedly drew our attention on September 11, 2001.
The newly installed head of Canada’s intelligence service opines:
Iraq has become a "post-graduate faculty for terrorism" and is attracting thousands of foreigners who could foment violence when they return home, the head of Canada's spy agency said in an interview published on Thursday.
Jim Judd, director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, told the Toronto Star newspaper that a new generation of militants was using the war in Iraq to get first-hand experience.
"We all obviously hope the conflict in Iraq ends soon, but then worry about what all these people are going to do," he said. "They will re-migrate around the world and return home.
The French also fret:
In a recent television interview, French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy called the terror risk for Paris "very high," adding, "We know that there are about 10 young Frenchmen in Iraq, ready to become kamikazes."
"One asks himself why a certain number of young French people are in Pakistan in religious schools," Sarkozy said. "It's not normal that an individual who lives in our neighborhoods leaves all of a sudden for four months in Afghanistan, three months in Syria. We want to know who is going where, for how long, and when they come back."
Sarkozy's comments underscore deep concern in Europe that Iraq has replaced Afghanistan as the world's main terrorist training ground, spreading upheaval across the Middle East to Europe and further radicalizing Muslims everywhere.
"Iraq is a live-fire training ground in urban terrorism, and that's exactly what we fear," said Francois Heisbourg, director of the Foundation for Strategic Research in Paris.
However, for the veterans of the insurgency in Iraq to return home and become a focal point for radicalizing young muslims in Europe they have to survive the experience. What are the chances of that happening and recreating the 1981-1989 Afghan War experience that resulted in approximately 25,000 politically indoctrinated and militarily trained veterans returning to their homes to carry on with jihad?
Size of the Zarqawi Organization
No one is really sure how big Zarqawi’s organization is. There is good reason to suppose that Zarqawi himself doesn’t have much of an idea. Most estimates hover in the 3,000 range. A CNN report places the number as lower:
Surprisingly few, numbering perhaps 500 to 1,500. They carry out the most spectacular and bloody attacks, including the suicide missions that have, at times, killed more than a 100 people in a single day and the beheadings, such as that of American Nicholas Berg.
Anthony Cordesman and Nawaf Obaid of the Center for Strategic and International Studies estimate that between four and ten percent of an estimated 30,000 insurgents in Iraq are foreigners representing between 1200 and 3000 fighters.
Attrition
The military also has its estimates. On October 20, 2005, MG Rick Lynch of Multinational Force-Iraq estimated during the course of the year they have killed about 400 and captured 376 over the course of 2005. The military estimates they are crossing into Iraq at the net rate of 150 per month.
Taken at face value this represents 1800 foreigners crossing into Iraq each year with about 936 killed or captured leaving a net plus of 834 to Zarqawi. The missing part of this equation is the losses that we know take place but cannot quantify.
For instance, insurgents wounded in combat. US forces in Iraq suffer 7.6 wounded for each combat fatality. Of the wounded, 19% require evacuation to a military hospital. Non-combat injuries and disease require many times more evacuations from the theater than do combat injuries. For each death, 1.4 soldiers are evacuated for wounds, 2.8 are evacuated for injuries, and 5.7 are evacuated for disease for a total of 9.9 losses of over 30 days duration for each combat death. We know the insurgents are neither as well armored nor do they have access to the same quality medical care as our troops. This implies a higher rate of seriously wounded who die for lack of proper care.
We also know that the foreign contingent suffers from desertions and defections. No big surprise here least of all in the context of a volunteer organization fighting in a foreign land against an overwhelming force.
The point of all of this being that if the proportion of losses – wounded, injured, diseased, died of wounded, killed and body recovered by the insurgents, deserted – reaches 2.8 for each body recovered and there is a net of 150 new foreign recruits each month, then the Zarqawi organization cannot win a war of attrition. In fact, we are quite probably killing the foreign fighters faster than they can be reconstituted:
Q. […] Talking about foreign fighters, you said that you are facing well-trained foreign fighters. Do you have any information about who is training those foreign fighters and where?
COL. BROWN: We did face well-trained foreign fighters prior to January elections. We have not faced well-trained foreign fighters since. Since February of this year until now, we have not seen any well-trained, in fact, very poorly trained foreign fighters. So whoever was training them before, I don't know, but apparently they've lost their support and they're not able to train them and they've -- you know, now we're getting much younger -- we had 15- to 17-year- olds, very young. You know, we were estimating -- it's kind of hard, you know, when you see the remains of a suicide bomber, there's not much left. But from captured ones, and then reports from these folks, they were very young, 15- to 17-years-old; not well trained. And we have not seen well-trained foreign fighters at all since February. So wherever they were training before, I don't know, but it's sure not -- they're not doing it anymore that I'm aware of because they're not coming here and we have not seem them.
It isn’t only the US military that sees the change:
When the U.S. military invaded in 2003, busloads of Iraqi exiles - and some Jordanians - drove into Iraq from Jordan to join the defense. As the anti-U.S. insurgency grew, Jordanian newspapers called it "al-Muqawama al-Sharifah" - the honorable resistance.
But such phrases are vanishing from news reports, and some see disillusionment setting in, including in Salt, another Jordanian city that, like Zarqa, has sent fighters to Iraq.
"At first, the propaganda worked on a few young men here," shopkeeper Mohamed Dabbas, 28, said over coffee at a Salt cafe. "But after the losses in Iraq and the stories about what was going on there, they’re not so ready to die."
Based on the best evidence we have it seems improbable that the foreign contingent in Iraq is able to recruit at a rate sufficient to replace losses from all attrition.
Effect
This is not to say insurgents do not survive combat and do not return home. The question then becomes how effective they are at radicalizing their communities. Again the afghani are held up as the bete noire: combat hardened, radical islamists returning home to spread the gospel of jihad. Several factors militate against this happening.
- The brutal attacks on Shi’a civilians as well as beheadings have damaged the image of the foreign fighters in the muslim community.
- Unlike the post Afghan War experience, the veterans of Iraq will not be feted by their governments. They face jail time or worse. Much of their time will be spent attempting to cover their tracks rather than recruiting others in terrorism.
- Fewer of them are returning home and those that do will have had a much more harrowing experience than the those who volunteered to fight the Soviets. If we work from the assumption that all races and cultures are psychologically hardwired in much the same way, we have to assume that the incidence of PTSD among returnees, given the intensity of their experience, will be astronomical and render them ineffective for future operations and as a role model.
The real danger to the euros is not the returning of veterans of the war in Iraq. The danger lies in the potentiality of Iraq to radicalize their already restive muslim populations. Those young men who are alienated from their own community and from society may form indigenous terror cells:
"Islamic terrorism is a much bigger problem in Europe than in the U.S. because you don't have the relatively large Muslim community that we do," said Charles Grant, director of the Center for European Reform in London. "What the war in Iraq has done is radicalize these people and make some of them prepared to support terrorism. Iraq is a great recruiting sergeant."
The degree to which any of these men act upon this impulse or whether it merely becomes yet another of their multitude of grievances against the West and modernity remains to be seen. What is for certain that any terror attack in Europe will be conveniently linked by that government to US policy in Iraq.
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Foreign Fighters Meme 53 Comments (0 topical, 53 editorial, 0 hidden) Post a comment »
Is your line of thought the following...Iraq is becoming a training ground for terrorists. Hopefully we are killing them off faster than they are being trained. That remains to be seen. If we're not successful killing them, they will most likely attack areas with attractive targets AND a large Muslim population in which they can recruit others--Europe. If this happens, Europe will blame us because we created the cycle in Iraq. Is that the jest of your post?
than replaced remains to be seen?
Perhaps you missed: Based on the best evidence we have it seems improbable that the foreign contingent in Iraq is able to recruit at a rate sufficient to replace losses from all attrition.
Which was used in the context of the oxymoron "military intelligence" which I translated to mean "remains to be seen".
I also read, "No one is really sure how big Zarqawi's organization is" and I also read, "This is not to say insurgents do not survive combat and do not return home". Neither of which gave me a complete feeling of confidence.
I'm sure the post was meant to say the glass is 95% full when it comes to killing the terrorists. But it only took 19 with box cutters on 9/11.
...has not worked so far in Iraq. you cite a few slices of the picture and then extrapolate. ok, but allow me to look at some different slices.
- the enemy is getting more lethal. casualties of American soldiers are steady or rising. casualties of Iraqi civilians are steady or rising. casualties of Iraqi police and security forces are through the roof.
- the enemy is innovating faster than we are. they bring new weapons (e.g. the IED's that rip through our armored vehicles, debuted last spring), new tactics, faster responses. (this is almost unavoidable since they are decentralized and thus every fighter can be an innovator and inventor; doesn't make it less effective)
- our resources are strained. are theirs? we have no evidence to suggest it. (is the middle east running out of poor young men yet?)
- we still don't know what the end game is, and they do; this. for Iraq to continue exactly as it is today is a vision of victory for them. (all they really want is lots of American targets to shoot at, and lots of civilian body count on our side for them to use for recruiting)
what's the solution? durned if I know, probably some choice involving the lesser of two evils. but I don't think the odds are good for "stay the course".
The powers that be brag every month or so that a #2 gets killed or we are killing more of them then they can recruit or we have 'turned a corner'.
It almost reminds me of an old WWII story about German Sargent who said "we would attack a new American unit, kill most of them and then what was left kicked our butt".
My understanding is that our intelligence on the enemy is very lacking and in reality we know nothing. After all this is the same folks that spoke of WMD and Iraqis welcoming use with candy and flowers. Kill ratios went out of style in Vietnam.
Bush: Better human intelligence needed
In a scathing report on the intelligence community, a presidential commission Thursday said the United States still knows "disturbingly little" about the weapons programs and intentions of many of its "most dangerous adversaries.
It may not matter even if true. In the 911 attacks, most were muscle only a few were seasoned terrorists. So if we kill 100 of every 200, we have eliminated the unlucky, the unskilled, the slow and the stupid leaving the rest to go home and train more.
Very interesting, and I think your analysis of the effects are very good.
I think Europe's position in all this is important-Europe is still too much in line with the apeasement, be nice to them, and they will like us, and whatever you do avoid ticking them off line of thinking.
Is it a good thing that Iraq is now the training ground for terrorists in the world? It sure doesn't seem like it.
to keep pressing on in Iraq.
Interestingly enough, you base your reasoning on 911, given that an assault on US soil has not occured since, and assert an uneasiness that the glass is only 95% full. All I have to say is, that's a hell of a lot better than it was on 910.
Military intelligence may indeed be an oxymoron, but to those of us who have served, an insult none-the-less.
sorry, got a little of the original topic there - my point was that if you look at other data or trends, it looks like the insurgency, whether foreign or homegrown, is getting bigger and meaner.
- Of course they are. Only those who live in the Wizard of Oz land could deduce otherwise. Freedom is not free, but perhaps a handout to those who know no better.
- Yes, a pipebomb is terribly advanced. Though, because of the tremendous efforts of our troops, there are fewer of those 'innovative' insurgents to make them.
- The resources of the wealthiest country in existence is strained? That's news to me. Alert the press.
- The end game hasn't changed: a democratic Iraq. (I wonder what that newly-minted constititionthingy they just voted for means anything...)
And hell, we're just getting started.
"Military intelligence may indeed be an oxymoron, but to those of us who have served, an insult none-the-less."
They aren't perfect, but they're a da** sight better than the alternative.
of military intelligience before I would trust what comes out of the CIA.
I am in general underwelmed with the ability of the CIA to actually do anything beyond march to their own drum.
I am referencing the following two comments.
[Iraq has become a "post-graduate faculty for terrorism" and is attracting thousands of foreigners who could foment violence when they return home, the head of Canada's spy agency said in an interview published on Thursday.
Jim Judd, director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, told the Toronto Star newspaper that a new generation of militants was using the war in Iraq to get first-hand experience.
"We all obviously hope the conflict in Iraq ends soon, but then worry about what all these people are going to do," he said. "They will re-migrate around the world and return home.
The French also fret:
In a recent television interview, French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy called the terror risk for Paris "very high," adding, "We know that there are about 10 young Frenchmen in Iraq, ready to become kamikazes."
"One asks himself why a certain number of young French people are in Pakistan in religious schools," Sarkozy said. "It's not normal that an individual who lives in our neighborhoods leaves all of a sudden for four months in Afghanistan, three months in Syria. We want to know who is going where, for how long, and when they come back."
Sarkozy's comments underscore deep concern in Europe that Iraq has replaced Afghanistan as the world's main terrorist training ground, spreading upheaval across the Middle East to Europe and further radicalizing Muslims everywhere.
"Iraq is a live-fire training ground in urban terrorism, and that's exactly what we fear," said Francois Heisbourg, director of the Foundation for Strategic Research in Paris.]
Neither the Canadian or French governments seem worried enough to aid in any way. They openly oppose our involvement in the war. Am I missing something?
I mean, LGF is running this story, a hagiography of a British Muslim who went off and got killed being a jihadi. In February 2001. In Kashmir. He was actually wounded on his first trip there, returned to Britain for sometime, and was subsequently killed on a second trip.
In short, this is not really a new phenomenon. Probably ever since the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, there's been a regional conflict furnishing the opportunity for Muslims to train in armed conflict and terrorism. The salient points with regards to Iraq are, I should think:
- The size of the conflict relative to Afghanistan, Kashmir, etc.: are there more opportunities for these people to train?
- Intensity of conflict: are "foreign volunteers" more likely to be killed in Iraq, as opposed to other venues, and are those that survive in Iraq likely to be more effective terrorists than those returning from other countries?
or the constitution wasn't the endgame, there is another milestone of democracy that must be crossed? what milestone is it, then?
the truth is, we simply don't know the endgame. the closest answer to the truth is,
- democratic government and one of the following:
- breaking the insurgency, i.e. iraqi security forces can take over and US can leave.
- US is out of money and stomach for war, which means, we may pull out, leaving a democratic government today, but it won't look too good tomorrow.
and there is no rational reason - no rational reason based on what we've seen to date - for expecting 1) to come true.
The missing stat is how many people are being motivated to become terrorists who would otherwise not be. If its more than the number being killed in Iraq, the fly paper theory was stupid. If its less, than the fly paper theory has some support.
we just don't agree on any of your three points.
the enemy is getting more lethal. casualties of American soldiers are steady or rising. casualties of Iraqi civilians are steady or rising. casualties of Iraqi police and security forces are through the roof.
The enemy is more lethal yet our casualties aren't rising? Actually, deaths among Iraqi security forces are down over the past 11 months.
our resources are strained. are theirs? we have no evidence to suggest it. (is the middle east running out of poor young men yet?
Well, if you are killing them faster than they can replace losses and, even if you deny that BFO, they can't freely pass people into Iraq so one would think their resources are strained.
we still don't know what the end game is, and they do; this. for Iraq to continue exactly as it is today is a vision of victory for them.
If we worry about achieving our endgame we don't need to be concerned with theirs. According to Zawahiri and Zarqawi this is not their vision of victory.
that you actually believe what you're saying.
You reek of defeatism.
Evidently you find it hard to believe that an average human being is capable of tending himself without the help of Big Daddy Government.
I'll put my money on the determination of a free society to remain that way. Iraqi troops will be further built and trained. Then we will leave.
seriously, how can you make such a counterfactual statement
and there is no rational reason - no rational reason based on what we've seen to date - for expecting 1) to come true.
Other than the pretty cheap and amateurish slight of hand in labeling every argument "not rational" in advance, I think your statement is unsupportable.
If just establishing one democracy was the goal, we wasted a lot of resources that we could have spent more efficiently in some other place. There are plently of other places where people suffer under tyrrany that would have been easier to establish democracy in.
For Iraq to be worth it, it must be not just a democracy, but such an exemplar of democracy that its form of government spreads through the region and dries up the roots of terrorism.
was that isn't the case, so I'm not disposed to defend a premise that I don't believe is correct.
though I would say that freedom is infectious, regardless of 'exemplary' democracy.
Number two in importance is the message we send to any nation who would harbor terrorist organizations: an allied Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq ain't too bad of a start.
If just one non-Iraqi terrorist-to-be, goes to Iraq to fight the "Great Satan" who invaded his Islamic Land, is trained by Zarqawi's group, escapes to Europe, uses his skills and inflamed hatred of Western Culture, and commits a horrific terrorist attack in Europe; are current US policies towards Iraq IN ANYWAY responsible for this outcome? (And I will stipulate that the Europeans have a degree of culpability in the attack and further stipulate that the madman and his crazy ideology is the root cause of the attack.)
hoped to take.
1- Iraq is not a training ground for terrorists because there are actually very few entering Iraq and fewer leaving.
2- The degree to which Iraq contributes to increased terrorism is limited to it being a motivator for Europes own muslims to commit acts of terror against their own governments. Just as they have used alleged outrage over the Palestinians to attack the West for 30 years.
3- Some European countries are laying the predicate to blame us in the case of a terror attack by their own citizens/residents.
portray exactitude when none is possible. For instance, I don't think Zarqawi even knows how large his organization is. But estimates seem to hover around 3,000. I don't see what is to be gained in claiming a specific number is correct when various sources range from 500 to 6,000.
For Iraq to be worth it, it must be not just a democracy, but such an exemplar of democracy that its form of government spreads through the region and dries up the roots of terrorism.
I'd settle for something like Turkey, but the idea that it must be something more than a functioning democratic society, with the terms of that democracy defined by the Iraqis, is just an attempt to preordain a failure.
were German policies responsible for 9-11 because most of the hijackers came from Hamburg?
That question makes about as much sense as asking who's policy it was that caused the jihad against America on 911.
Then why have we been at it longer the time from Pearl Harbor to the surrender on the Missouri.
In the same amount time this GOP admin failed to crush the Iraqi insurgancy or even to get good intelligence on it, a Dem admin, took US military from near zero, developed all kinds of new technology, beat 2 of the great military powers of the age, mobilized a nation and conquered the world.
Gee, boss, if we had taken this long and performed this badly in WWII, the east coast would be speaking German, the West Coast Japanese and if I was real lucky, maybe Alabamians would still be speaking Southern though they'd real worried about it.
- american casualties are holding steady or rising
well, the research surprised me. let's see.
I graphed US casualties by month (2nd graph from top) in excel and saw a very erratic line. so I plotted a trailing ten-month average (starting from month 10). the line starts at 48/month in 12/03, rises steadily to 83 in 1/05, then decreases steadily to 67 in 10/05.
which means - they are going down slightly since the election? maybe - if it continues that way for another 10 months, I'll believe it.
however - I think you guys would agree that this dip in US casualties accompanies a rise in Iraqi security force casualties. I couldn't find any data on this at all, but since Iraqi forces are taking over more operations (and since more attacks are being targeted against them), I believe their casualties have more than compensated.
so in my mind the question is this (and this gets at the rest of my points): when will the back of the insurgency break? if measured by lethality, they haven't been significantly damaged by what we've thrown at them so far. this is what they're doing against the full might of the US military. how do we get to an engdame where the insurgency causes less violence than today, with only the Iraqi security forces to prevent it? or is today's level of violence (or more) expected once America leaves? is that acceptable?
unless they contributed to victory.
If it takes us a hundred thousand to train and equip a soldier and it takes them 300 hundred with a pool of labor from unskilled labor, then you need a kill ratio of about 3,333 to one. If you are at the end of a very long supply chain, then they can take a kill ratio of thousands to one and win.
believe that a global war on terror holds resemblence to WWII other than the word 'war', then I can't help you.
And your point about a successful war campaign because of a 'Dem admin' is the icing on the Stupid cake.
Such an organization will not be top down, but a network of cells with cutouts to prevent losses beyond that cell.
Some cells may be allied with one leader or another. They may get together for an operation and then dispurse.
Middle East expert Anthony Cordesman, who is one of the report's authors, says many of the new recruits join the Zarqawi group, though not all.
"Sometimes they seem to be recruited into cells rather than through any central organization," he said. "So they'll go to Syria, for example, and then go to the actual cell without having been passed through the organization itself. Some of the people doing the recruiting seem to have this kind of direct connection rather than a connection through the organization. But what is very clear is that most of the foreign volunteers are always Sunni Islamic extremists and the number is rising it is not declining.
But defeating the foreign fighters will not be easy and - according to CSIS - will require more than just a military solution."To really win you have to win politically," said Anthony Cordesman. "To really win you have to convince Iraqis, and particularly Iraqi Sunnis, the public, not to allow these people to exist, to report them whenever they are there. You have to have a police force, you have to have governance in these areas so that people feel secure and are willing to report the fact that these people are operating."
Until then, he says suicide bombings and other acts of violence are likely to continue in Iraq. What Mr. Cordesman and other experts fear is that those foreign fighters who survive the Iraq conflict may return to their home countries to put their terrorist skills to use
With our Mil Intel(upper levels) and CIA being judged on how much they please the admin, then any intel can be in question.
in the last 100 years.
On the other hand GOP admins gave up on Korea(Ike) and Vietnam(Nixon).
That all aside, boss, the question was regarding the Iraqi War, not some war on a concept called terrorism that seems to be subjective and not objective.
organized and funded the jihadists in the beginning and got them organized, provided networking, arms and safe places.
and not the notion that a jihad was initiated as a side-effect of government policy.
and yet undeniably more substantial than 'some war on a concept called terrorism'.
I never realized mere concept could take down a building.
before Reagan's arms build up resulted in a technical win. Of course, it almost bankrupted us and set the stage for borrow and spend GOPism.
In any case, the cold war was by defination not a war.
Not warriors nor implements of war. Murderers, vandals, zealots and pawns, but not warriors.
What land can we take and subjugate terrorism to our will? We tried it once, in the Philippines and the only real thing we got out of it was the .45ACP. What is the capital of Terrorism? What is its economy? What Army can we defeat?
The twin towers could have be saved by police work and good security. But the pursuit of profits, a bloated bureaucracy and a President who was interested in the nightly sports TV program, failed to protect us. Indeed, there are millions of undocumented aliens in the US, and only a handful of agents assigned to track them down. We are still unprotected.
Hmmm.
What difference is there?
If there is a conflict somewhere, then jihadists will migrate there for combat experience.
If there is no conflict available, then jihadists will migrate to selected countries for combat training.
Isn't one of the reasons for invading Afghanistan was to interrupting the training camps? And wasn't this before Iraq? So does the current fighting in Iraq have anything to do with this dynamic?
Isn't it a given that jihadists will try to obtain training regardless of the circumstances?
we approach this from a different point of view.
As a metric for determining progress casualties aren't very helpful. Low casualties, by themselves, can be an indicator of peacefulness or passivity. If you are aggressively patrolling you have to expect casualties.
If one is using casualties as a marker for something, I'd recommend using fatal incidents rather than fatalities to eliminate the bad luck factor. For instance, 3/25 Marines suffered 21 dead in two incidents. A helicopter crash may total a dozen.
I don't believe there is a magic bullet for getting to the end. Just hard work. I suspect, when this is over and if we win -- which is very much up for grabs given the political stake many have in forcing a loss here -- we will be able to trace the breaking of the insurgency to the battle for Mosul in January/February 2005 and Operation HUNTER of this month.
You seem to have set being booted as a goal and you have succeeded.
Was your last sentence..."What is for certain that any terror attack in Europe will be conveniently linked by that government to US policy in Iraq".
I'm not sure what you meant by "conveniently linked"? Do you feel there would be a link with US policies or not? Would it be fair to make that link or not?
I noticed no one answered my question either yes or no...they just echoed the points I stipualated to.
fairness depends on the motivation and desperation of the person making the claim.
For 30 years islamic extremists have blamed Israel and US support of Israel for their actions. I see Iraq as just the newer and better reason that will be used to justify the nihilism that seems to pervade radical islam.
I believe that France and Canada are making these public pronouncements so they will be able to deflect the causation of future domestic terror attacks from their own policies that encourage the ghettoization of relatively large muslim populations to the war in Iraq.
So would the link be fair in the sense that we have any certainty that the anticipated terrorist attack would not have occurred were it not for Iraq? No. If anything the history of radical islam demonstrates that they can find a grievance to act on pretty easily.
Would it be fair to in the sense that shifting the blame to the US would avoid a political crisis at home? Sure.
The Other line on that graph:
Ops Tempo.
We have been Agressively hnting down the terrorists in the last 10 months and getting More agressive, not less, as Iraq units come on line.
Plot THAT line and you'll find that we are losing the troops we are on Offensive actions.
Korea is not over yet. We haven't given up on it. Furthermore, an outright, complete victory would have required the defeat of China as well. Something No One was capable of at the time without the use of nuclear weapons.
and is much appreciated.
Given the statistics you quote, it appears that the President's foundational argument for occupying Iraq, the wisdom of fighting (and killing) terrorists abroad, rather than on US soil, has borne fruit.
Many, many thanks to the President and to the men and women in US military uniform.