Batfink's Beep -- 1-6-06

Zawahiri claims victory in Iraq

January 6, 2006

Oh, look: Zawahiri says that "Islam" has won in Iraq. I gather that this means we've lost. Well, offhand, I'd have to say that if an overthrown dictator, an increasingly self-sufficient Iraqi police force,and 3 successful elections culminating in a new democratic constitution and a new democratically elected leadership, resulting in our guys being able to come home is losing, I'll take it. But why would HE be crowing about that?

Must be that's not what he means. Let's see if we can figure out where he's coming from:

Bush was forced at the end of last year to announce that he will pull out his forces from Iraq, but he was giving excuses for his withdrawal that the Iraqi forces have reached a good level

"Excuses"? Get him... He sounds more like an American liberal every day, doesn't he? Fella actually thinks, as don't all the good little liberals, that Bush's goal was to stay forever. Didn't Hillary suggest that recently, too? Something to the effect that she didn't want us to pull out immediately (this was an effort to distance herself from Jack Murtha) but didn't want us to stay forever, either, presumably expressing likewise disagreement with... well, who? Whose mouth was she trying to put those words into, exactly? Must be Bush, because she was apparently attempting one of her patented 'disagree-with-both-sides-and-thus-claim-the-middle' ploys. As if anyone, least of all Bush, DID want that -- but look: Zawahiri ALSO thinks that Bush wanted to stay forever. He is actually claiming victory (putting aside for the moment on whose behalf he's claiming it) based on the fact that we can now bring some people home. Actual victory must be seeming awfully unlikely to ol' Ayman these days, if he has to rhetorically seize it on those terms. After all, that would mean that Nazi Germany beat us in WW2, and that Imperial Japan did as well, since we eventually left both those places, too; and even the liberals don't try to sell that.

On reflection, I suppose that Mr. Z is actually telling us more about how HIS side views the goals of war than anything else. If the goal is to take a place over, digest it, and hold it in thrall, then yes: leaving would be analogous to defeat, I suppose. Consider the Syrian pullout from Lebanon a few months ago -- nobody is claiming that Bashar won that one. But then, that he thought that was Bush's secret plan also reminds one of the American left (remember the "Bush just wants their oil" ranting before we went in?) It really ought not surprise that he can't conceive another purpose for war besides that.

I suppose that, in the end, it had to come to this, or something like it. Nobody likes to admit defeat, and there are a lot of people, not all of them in America, for whom a succesful campaign in Iraq and troops coming back in glory would be a catastrophic defeat. But you can't claim quagmire anymore when the boys are coming home, so it was time for some new spin for those who lost -- some other way to try to claim that Bush didn't actually win. How long before the American left starts picking up Ayman's line?

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Revised: 05/19/08 08:07:04 -0400 .