I thought that setting a date for withdrawal* was going to "embolden the enemy" or some such? *Despite retaining military bases etc.
I believe the argument is actually "all they have to do is wait until the specified date." Though I can understand how a man of your limited thinking would substitute reality with your own preconceived strawmen in order to feel superior to... well, anybody.
More like diverting resources to other areas of opportunity until the U.S. military prematurely leaves and all that nice equipment that's been purchased for them can be bribed away for pennies on the dinar.
I think the bad folks will chill out + train in Yemen, since we just said we aren't going to hang our shingle there. Eventually they can discreetly move back to Iraq and strike once our guard is sufficiently down. They have all the time in the world....they don't have opposition to their actions, or a timetable per se.
It was a mistake, but once made....I think only a complete fucking moron would call fixing the mistake a complete waste of time.
Didn't Anc report a while back that everyone he talks to over there is staying in their bases, bored out of their minds? Still, no deaths is a good thing.
One of my cousins is over there right now(actually serves in Anc's old unit) and he said they're doing a lot of sitting around right now. Which I guess is good news in a way.
Except that Al Qaeda have played a very small part in the Iraqi insurgency. What I think has happened is that the Iraqi factions have been sufficiently segregated and bought off that they no longer have interest in fighting each other.
Two separate studies found they accounted for about 10% of the attacks in the country. And of course, they specialized in attacks the were intended to incite civil war between the factions in Iraq - they clearly wanted the government unstable and Shia fighting Sunni. That made them a very important player in the region. And when the US pulled out back to their bases, AQ attacks flared up once more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Qaeda_in_Iraq
I wouldn't say that 10% is that much in the context of this (much more significant) reduction in violence.
It certainly appears their political role has diminished. Their role in the violence has actually increased, as the other groups have decreased their violence levels significantly. And as their aim was to incite sectarian violence in the early to middle phases of the occupation, it's hard to cite exactly how influential their role was. I think we'll need about 20 years of perspective on that one. I think it's safe to say with the targets they struck they helped rise the level of violence well above the direct affects of their attacks.
