The Race is not Always to the Swift, nor the Battle to the Strong

Whether your favorite scribe is stuttering Charlie Krauthammer, smiling Billy Kristal or Hugh "the Conqueror" Hewitt, the word that is spreading across the land is the same, al Qaeda in Iraq is beaten. Their fighters killed and reeling in disarray. Their influence among the Sunni tribes gone. We have won, they say. Nation building, a concept they loathed at the beginning of the Afghan/Iraq debacle, is the happy quest they now urge us to embark upon. All that is needed now, to set Iraq on the right track is a continued presence and a trillion or so dollars a year over the next couple of generations. Of course, that's just for Iraq. Can these neocon lights possibly strive to burn any dimmer?

Have the jihadis run out of eager young men to enlist in the fight against the West? Have they run out of money? Have we caused them to lose faith in their religion and ideology? Have we truly foiled the Wahhabi menace?

I think it is more likely that many have returned to the lands of their birth in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and elsewhere around the Arab world, maybe to a neighborhood near you. They will be greeted as heroes. Camels will be roasted. The returning heroes will have their pick of the little domestic girls from the Philippines or Indonesia. Others, with a different preference, will be given the camel jockey boys, from the slave markets of the Sudan. The heroes will be cleansed with fragrant oils and dressed in the whitest robes and presented in the mosques, accepted into the councils of wealth and influence. In time they will venture out around the World, as missionaries, to spread the word. They will speak to the men in the mosques and to the boys in the madrases. The men will raise money, the boys will journey to the training camps. The seasons will change, the cycle will start again. Let the Americans grow fat and lazy in their fortified bases. Let them pay the Sunni Chieftains for awhile. When their purses grow light, the Sunnis will soon enough change masters again. The Shiia will never allow the Sunni a place in their government, nor would the Sunni accept it. The Kurds have their own concerns. Nation building is for fools that believe in nations. Allah is the one God but his people are many tribes.

For those that have not had enough fighting, there is plenty of fighting still. The brothers in the Taliban are taking back the mountains and valleys of Afghanistan. The warlords there are busy guarding and selling their opium and will soon be sated by the treasure they receive for it. They feast and sing and dally with the young dancing boys. Bush's lapdog dictator in Pakistan has lost the trust of the people and they need leadership in the violent fight against him that is sure to come. It is better to fight where the enemy is weak than where he is strong.

The enemy that we fight in Iraq and Afghanistan is not a nation. The armies of the enemy do not travel in mass. They appear and disappear in their own time, to their own advantage. They do not need to win any battles, they simply need to keep the pot stirred. They do not need to worry about funding, budgets or support at home. They have all the time in the World. Every effort we make can be turned against us.

You want to know how this is going to turn out? Read a little Mesopotamian or Afghan history. For that matter, a little history of the American Revolution would do as well. The race is not always to the swift nor the battle to the strong.