An Al-Qaeda Strategy That Has Already Failed
By J.D. Johannes
The Times of London is reporting that Zarqawi is attempting to “set up his own mini-army and move away from individual suicide attacks to a more organised resistance movement.”
But Al-Qaeda in Iraq tried quasi-military coordinated attacks last spring–they were a complete failure, except in the eyes of the legacy media.
On April 1st of 2005 an 80-man Al-Qaeda force attempted to assault Abu Ghraib prison and release the prisoners.
I happened to be on the outside edge of the fight that night and saw the results the next moring.
Zarqawi’s force didn’t even get close.
They also made runs at several other installations, also with zero success.
And the last time Al-Qaeda tried to hold any ground any territory or a city as an organized group, it resulted in the battle of Fallujah.
Al-Qaeda was thrashed by several battalions of Marines in the battle of Fallujah.
The strength of the insurgency in the past year has been the Western drive-by-media’s obesession with car bombs in Baghdad.
The move back to a previously unsuccessful strategy could very well be a media ploy by Zarqawi. Unsuccessful military operations are likely to garner lots of ink from the media and be framed by the media as a sign the insurgency is gaining momentum.
What Zarqawi is playing for is one spectacular event, an event that will probably fail miserably, but will be blown out of proportion by the media and earn him thousands of Gross Ratings Points–and hopefully enough to drive American public opinion of the war down even further.
Mr. Johannes is a film maker who blogs at facesfromthefront.com.
May 2nd, 2006 at 8:08 pm
I would say Zarqawi is looking for a Tet offensive, but with the media the way it is, all he would have to do is put on a fireworks display and Katie Couric would take off her glasses and say, “and they say we’re winning this war.”