Do you always talk to yourself and answer your own questions?
First, what was it that the "Sunni insurgency" was (is) fighting for, or against?
They were fighting to regain what they lost, the rule over Iraq to which they felt entitled. You had several factions which joined together, ex-Baathists and AQI (supplying leadership and $$$), and various ex-army and tribal Sunni types, supplying bodies.
Second, if you have any dim notion of an answer that question, then what do the recent developments of the Sunnis accepting arms and money from the US in return for cutting back on killing our troops have to do with those "insurgency" goals?
They have to do with positioning themselves for the ethno-sectarian struggle for power that is Iraq today. Paradoxically, as Shia power established itself in the central government, Americans became de facto allies of the Sunnis because only the American have a strong interest in not seeing the Sunnis driven out of Iraq entirely, which would be a-okay by most of the Shia and Kurds. Situations change and develop. In their own ways.
nd with respect to Al Queda in Iraq, It seems that it wasn't the big movement in Iraq that some said it was, doesn't it?
LOL, this would be axiomatic, because they have been beaten, right? If they are beaten they couldn't ever be a big or effective movement, because that might mean a significant victory - a significant American victory - had happened. No, that can't be of course. Shall I remind anyone here of the number of suicide bombers AQI has set off in Iraq in the last four years, or how many thousands of people they killed, or how many times we were all told that AQI, excuse me, the "freedom fighters" of Iraq were invincible?
Now who was it that said that our leaving would leave Iraq at a big risk of being controlled by Al Queda?
Yes I did say that. I said that to argue that we should not leave our enemy victorious in the field, but stay and beat them as it was vital to our national interests.
Now that we DID stay and we DID beat them, contrary to your wishes, you claim that they can never have been a threat on no evidence whatsoever, but the fact that we DID beat them. AQI controlled most of Al Anbar and parts of the other Sunni provinces for three years and more. Now you want to drop their existence down the memory hole.
This argument comes from some bizarro-world where the elemental distinction between winning and losing has disappeared. |
