Inside the Insurgency

The Officer's Club uses the release of hostage Jill Carrol as a window into the current mindset of the Iraqi insurgents; and provides excellent analysis. Some conclusions, among many:

They are cogniscent of our own internal struggle over the occupation. Carroll's forced propaganda statement echoed some of the most popular phrases used by the global anti-war movement, using "illegal occupation," "unjust war," and the old "Iraqi terrorists are freedom fighters" line, just to name a few...

They consider President Bush's leadership a grave threat. Not only was President Bush brought up in the Carroll interview, he got his own question. Carroll's kidnapper prompted her: "Do you have a message for Mr. Bush," to which she replied with the typical occupation, quagmire, unjust war talking points. The question was a political stab at the President, who is the first President to take fighting radical Islam with the appropriate level of seriousness.

I find the final conclusion disturbing; and I hope against hope that time proves it wrong:

Jill Carroll will not be the last Westerner to be kidnapped in Iraq, but she may be the last one released. Kidnapping is the only real way the insurgents can get airtime these days, which is why Jihadi propaganda comes with kneeling captives at their feet. Releasing Carroll was an experiment, one that failed from the insurgency's point of view. Carroll was released and immediately disavowed statements she made in captivity. The insurgents were exposed as a cheap propagandists, and their message was blurred in the celebration surrounding Carroll's return home. Killing a hostage makes a far more drastic statement than releasing one does, which is precisely why we're unlikely to see any more hostages released.

And this is the best al-Qaeda's Iraq division can do. More like a bunch of ragtag misfits than the feared guerrilla army that the Democrats make them out to be (or the New York Times shills for - this piece of enemy propoganda went uncorrected save for a paragraph 17 mention in an unrelated story).

If the media, and the Democrats, will let us, the Iraqi war can be over in short order, with less ccivilian casualities and fewer hostages turning up dead. If they would only get out of our way...