Thirty-two days ago, when defeat in Iraq was the pessimist meme of choice, I said, "A lot of people in Iraq are scared. But I have a feeling among those most worried are the various strains of thugs who are beginning to realize the folly of their overconfidence — lost in the orgy of slaughter, they bet everything in a contest they can't possibly win. Strategic vacuity is our enemies' Achilles' Heel, and our forces had best exploit it."

Now, the two groups attempting insurrections — the Iranian-backed Shiite terrorists led by Muqtada al-Sadr and the Ba'athist-led thugs in Fallujah — are unable to declare much more than empty threats. As the Marine Corps made clear in Fallujah, insurgents were utterly outmatched and their position in the Golan neighborhood stood at the mercy of an American initiative. Whatever reprieve the Ba'athists gained after days of heavy losses began — and thus can end — at our forces' choosing. Al-Sadr's ragtag "Mahdi Army" has been losing men in double-digits, facing attrition not only from Americans but Iraqis in Najaf, apparently meting vigilante justice out to the mob who would take liberty from them. Slowly, carefully, these enemies are losing.

Securing Iraq — to a point where only borders and wastelands are considered unsafe, the best we could expect for a country surrounded by hostile regimes — is far from complete. Given what has been accomplished after one year, I would consider eighteen months to two years a minimum amount of time necessary for Western military might and emerging Iraqi common good and civil enforcement to grind Ba'athist holdovers and in-country foreign terrorists into the ground. But the two objectives of 2004's Bloody April — capturing Iraqi support in the confusion and shocking Americans into panic and retreat — were not met. Politically, strategically and especially tactically, the Khomeinist-Ba'athist offensive failed. As I said yesterday, "The threat of terrorism and dictatorship feeds like any other evil, reliant on the weakness and failure of free will." American confidence, shaken by April and again in May with Abu Ghraib, is still strong, perhaps surprisingly so; if it holds, the measured ascension of a free and peaceful Iraq will be unstoppable.

IRAQIS IN NAJAF ARE PROTESTING: Against al-Sadr. Via IP, who links to a report stating that the wannabe cleric is suing for terms. What was that about Iraqis not able to cut it democratically? It seems President Bush isn't the only one being "misunderestimated." For all those who felt it was time to break loose: help yourselves, you've earned it.

KEEPING 'DIE' IN THE 'NEVER SAY' COLUMN: Just received an e-mail from Craig Brett, to whose weblog IP linked this morning, with the simple message of "we think alike." Indeed we do. About the same time Wretchard the Cat corrected assertions (or, who knows, accusations) of his "optimism," I began to think about my own. Why invest my time, most of this weblog, in the idea that Afghanistan, Iraq and the greater Near East will be free? And ultimately the world? I say that those things can be near-certain but I know enough to leave fate to the hands weaving it. America fights this war because we've seen a glimpse of doom. [One of the worst lessons the Me Generation learned from Vietnam was that foreign strife was too far away for conscience, that as soon as the television was switched off, Saigon stopped burning.] So then — why? As Wretchard put it, I haven't anything to lose. Why bet against good people — the idea that all honest men, everywhere in the world, want the same out of life? Even one glance a day at Iraqi and Iranian weblogs shows people separated not in heart, only by distance. If there is a pleasure in correctly predicting the failure of good causes that is not misanthropy, I don't know of it.

The threat of terrorism and dictatorship feeds like any other evil, reliant on the weakness and failure of free will.

We are at another juncture where the decision to remove Saddam Hussein and build a democratic Iraq faces an aggressive challenge. The question has never been answered to satisfy those who opposed this action outright or those who supported it under President Clinton but oppose it under President Bush. It nags those who say they are "reconsidering," as if events could be undone, that Iraqis and Arabs didn't need freedom so much after all. National Public Radio correspondent Juan Williams sniffed at a ten-minute segment run by Chris Wallace of Fox New Sunday on one year's accomplishments in postwar Iraq. "That's not why we went into Iraq," he insisted, brushing aside "knapsacks full of school supplies" for Iraqi schoolgirls; instead hammering on weapons of mass destruction, which he said the Allies hadn't found. Odd that Williams' politics lead him to support massive admissions of public welfare for Americans, who literally enjoy the most freedom and opportunity on Earth, and he would shrug at the federal government's subsidies channeled to the truly destitute.

Set aside the former Iraqi dictator's clear — if not politically satisfying — research, possession and use of catastrophic weapons and connections with terrorism, the ultimate nexus for city-sized doses of Armageddon against an increasingly paralytic civilized world. Twenty-five million Iraqis lived in a fear so omnipresent that few of us can and, hopefully, will ever palpably understand. Hundreds of thousands of them were dumped into mass graves after their arbitrary murders. Hundreds of thousands more died in Saddam's ill-fated wars, his maintenance of order through compulsion and the criminal betrayal of the Iraqis and the world's trust known as Oil-for-Food.

That the United Nations' consummate moral failure is handed news status secondary to a few dozen fool soldiers in Abu Ghraib, and that those highly visible public figures who have barely let out a squeak on the first injustice is troubling — but unsurprising. That these same parties resolve that one sadistic soldier out of every few thousand in Iraq is enough to condemn the United States to solitary confinement and the Iraqis to a brief time of chaos before another long period of slavery is disgusting, carelessly said or not, and denies them much of any moral authority in the matter.

When I was in early elementary school, those universal images of African or Latin American children with distended stomachs — walking in the mud with flies crawling about on their faces, all above a graphic inset of a pledge amount and phone number — puzzled me. What's the matter with the lot of these people, I wondered. Why is their suffering so acute, their poverty abject? Charity advertisements never moved beyond this grotesque film footage: for all I knew, Ethiopia, say, was a large, flat expanse of people living in squalor, sitting in filth, eating mush out of clay bowls. That's just what they did all day long, punctuated only by NGO food drops.

The institutions asking for my five cents to feed a child for seven weeks did not bother to tell me that every one of these countries was lawless, tightly in the grip of thugs, each taking his turn to consolidate a country's power and wealth in the latest turn of bloody successions. Where then, I wondered when old enough to understand, were the pleas by these charities to alter the circumstances under which millions suffered, calls for democratization — recognizing that American "privilege," the source of funds for foodstuffs, was begat by the rights and freedoms protected by the United States Constitution? Where were the calls to give these masses the power to control their own country, their own lives? Ethiopians weren't simply unfortunate. They were made, by men, to suffer. For all that the commercials and blow-ins in Maryknoll put up, food drives would continue indefinitely, and those living under tyranny maybe might not starve as much. How would their situation change? Not much, though the benefactor and charity might feel better about themselves as they tucked themselves in that night, probably not understanding that in the faraway place, people would wake up the next morning with a little more food in the same, horrible place. The disconnect between symptom and cause startled me, repelling me as shallow philanthropy does — like someone giving a beaten child a candy bar instead of working to incarcerate the abusive father. No one inherits nor deserves a dictator, and anyone who believes so is only a hop, skip and a white hood away from beliefs with which few would normally wish to associate.

That hasn't stopped some from trying to twist Abu Ghraib into yet another reason to withdraw and abandon the Iraqis — dear God, never mind that many of these people wanted to prevent Operation Iraqi Freedom because America left uprisings to be crushed in 1991 or reached out to Hussein in 1982. Let's just use their fractured argument to make a point. The prevailing convoluted thread of logic goes like this: American soldiers disobey fundamental military and civilized laws and codes. The entire complement of Allied forces, nearly 200,000 of them, are complicit in the offenses by association. Allied forces, their respective countries and cultures are morally incapable of teaching the Iraqis to live freely and democratically being, as the saying goes, "no better than Saddam." Resolve to leave Iraqis to the region's cannibals, who, having expressed insult, would feel much better if they could bring the Iraqis under a new totalitarian banner.

So out of respect for the human rights of men killing soldiers and innocents to prevent Iraqi democracy, in mockery of the Geneva Convention claimed to protect them, we are told to pack up, even if it means guaranteeing the institutionalization of cruelty seen at Abu Ghraib — and far, far worse treatment. Sound ridiculous? It is. The trial of Abu Ghraib shows democracy's strength in adversity, not fraudulence. That's coming from the other corner. Eager to pounce on vulnerable opponents, those indifferent to Iraqi democracy have let slip an impression of their own investment in human rights — if they keep talking, they may very well be asked to issue apologies of their own.

LAYING IT DOWN: Rich Galen, who was in Iraq for some time and saw Abu Ghraib, weighs in.

Who says only farmers are up before the crack of dawn? Eggs are on the griddle and if I had grits, they'd be a-heatin' instead of hash browns.

Even though the latest, most extensive Gallup poll of Iraqis was released ten days ago, I haven't seen this point made about it: we realize that the Kurds "love us," as so many pundits have put it. But why? Could it be the fact that before last year the Kurds had enjoyed relative autonomy for over a decade, and because that measure of safety from Saddam's clutches came from the United States, their understanding of American motives and dependability have grown and solidified? While on one hand I remain confident that Iraqis who are newly released from the Ba'athist nightmare will quickly embrace the tenets of free living, I take care not to underestimate the trauma of decades of Stalinist rule. There's an answer to those who ask if Iraqis can be democratic — why yes, they can. Look at the Kurds, who are effectively ten years ahead of their Sunni and Shiite Arab brothers. They escaped fear, distrust, force as the instrument of rule. The future of the whole of Iraq can be glimpsed in the north; so if we understand the necessary length of withdrawal, the incubation time, we can gird ourselves for the challenges to come over the next several years.

I've been an early and consistent opponent of those who believe violence in Iraq to be a product of Iraqi immaturity or savagery, that Iraqis would eventually embrace incessant intimidation, destruction and murder — or simply capitulate, forever slaves to tyranny. When the Khomeinist-Ba'athist offensive began in April I wondered, after initial responses from Americans clearly showed the insurgent's inferiority in the military and political contest they had entered, if a fatal strategic mistake had been made; that the enemy shared by Iraqis and Westerners struck too soon, overconfident, and would not only fail to incite panic and chaos but help to unite Iraqis in a newfound common good against strongmen. If this mistake could only be exploited, much could be gained for the country's security and stability. In southern Iraq, that coalescence may have begun:

Representatives of Iraq's most influential Shiite leaders met here on Tuesday and demanded that Moktada al-Sadr, a rebel Shiite cleric, withdraw militia units from the holy cities of Najaf and Karbala, stop turning the mosques there into weapons arsenals and return power to Iraqi police and civil defense units that operate under American control.

...Several Shiite leaders acknowledged that they had delayed issuing their statement until there were clear signs that public opinion among Shiites had moved strongly against Mr. Sadr. Reports in the past two weeks have spoken of a shadowy death squad calling itself the Thulfiqar Army shooting dead at least seven of Mr. Sadr's militiamen in Najaf, and several thousand people attended an anti-Sadr protest meeting outside the Imam Ali shrine in the city on Friday, according to several of the meeting's participants.

This could be a powerful vindication for the reputation of Iraqis who seem to have caught much of the blame for the actions of a few — a divorced, irreconcilable few who are the forces from whom the Allies liberated Iraq and seek to liberate the Near East.

Tim Blair was probably joking when he quipped that North Korea's aversion to the Saddam Treatment, recently reported, is based on the photographs from Abu Ghraib.

Americans, comfortable with equality in most occupations, have focused their concern over Near East reaction on the contempt and depravity in the pictures, universally apparent and understood. But that at least three of the photographs involve cruelty at the hands of a woman — two of them with that leering, round-faced brunette, a cigarette hanging out of her mouth — carries, if these photographs are not omitted from circulation, the potential for a profound shock to the misogynistic pits of the Near East. Male American soldiers mistreating prisoners would be par for the state-controlled propaganda course. But a woman? Someone who would be relegated to a veil and silence, from Tehran to Riyadh to Damascus? In 1945, the Japanese, in whose culture women were wholly subservient, were more than curious about the womens' corps disembarking from transport ships to fulfill traditional roles as clerks, nurses and couriers. Neither tradition nor even the licentiousness that extremists usually ascribe to American women are in the snapshots in question. Instead, women shared the work of the barbarian, not only standing alongside their male counterparts in disobeying law and honor but superior to their charges — humiliating, quite literally, the pride of Islamofascism. To be frank, I'm intimidated.

The photographs from Abu Ghraib are anathema to the American inspiration and will at least slightly damage our bid for Muslim hearts and minds. Yet one can't help but wonder how the images viewed by the dedicated enemy — who are unlikely to become more hateful — will affect the enemy's reception of us.

INTERESTING: I'm not the only one to take it from this angle.

As I attended to some housecleaning last evening, Fox News' War Stories popped on and Oliver North began narrating the Second World War's Burma campaign. Quite relevant to the "forgotten battles" were the Rising Sun's systemic and horrific war crimes, which North took time to enumerate. Two points were immediately clear to me: first, Errol Morris' exercise in moral equivalence operated largely on historical omission; second, although military commanders have worried since time immemorial of what unrestrained soldiers might do to those at their mercy, cruelty's familiarity makes it no less reprehensible. Thankfully, the American military is one whose honor is without precedent; those few responsible for the humiliation and torment of Iraqis will, as Will Collier put it, "spend most of the rest of their lives in Kansas making small rocks out of big rocks."

OxBlog found a report on the true work of American GIs (via IP):

A new multipurpose recreation facility has opened in the Al Dura neighborhood, benefiting thousands of residents in Baghdad's Al Rashid district. The Al Dura Sports Complex includes a soccer field with bleachers, basketball court, a place for volleyball and a playground with several types of exercise equipment. The area was a vacant lot full of trash when the project started. It is an example of renovating and improving areas for public recreation called for by Ambassador Bremer in his Baghdad Beautiful initiative. This success is the result of neighborhood District Advisory Council (DAC) leaders working together with the US Army First Cavalry Division to determine a project which would most help the area.

...The children liked it as well. A twelve year old named Jafa said, "This is a very good idea. I play soccer, and my brother is on the field right now playing for the Iraqi Police Service team." His friend Mustafa added, "Thank you, American Army!" A soccer game was played between the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps (ICDC) and the Iraqi Police Service (IPS). IPS was victorious by a score of 2 to 0.

Justice will be served — America has a reputation to defend.

Ali is the next Iraqi to weigh in on the proposed Iraqi flag (here's Zeyad's opinion). All I can say is that I look forward to the dry wit a free Iraq is bound to export over the next decades.

Whether Wretchard of Belmont Club is a grizzled old grandfather who sits down to blog with whiskey-tinted coffee or a smart, young strategist every party wishes they had on the payroll, he has masterfully predicted most events in Fallujah for the last month. Retreat, you say? Not so, if Wretchard is again largely correct: Marine "withdrawal" tossed about in headlines is indeed repositioning, and the imported Iraqi soldiers will be used as a dustpan to the Marines' brush. Americans, it would seem, are quite capable of nuance:

One of the risks to taking the town was always that the defenders would use the opportunity to stage their own Viking funeral pyre by torching the town and roasting as many civilians as they could with it. The answer, it seemed back in April 3 was:

However, if the Marines exert only gradual pressure, and use neighbors or Iraqi police from outside Fallujah to guide other neighbors into processing areas, the defenders will never be presented with a clear opportunity to precipitate a crisis. Once the Marines get the momentum of processing going, the tribal leaders will lose control and the whole structure will start to crumble. The Marines can exploit their physical domination by offering clemency or even rewards to those who rat out on other perps. The inner bastion of Fallujah will collapse like a termite-eaten post as each man looks out for himself.

It is in this context that the perplexing cycle of ceasefires punctuated by nocturnal assaults can be understood. The Corps, besides incorporating the Chinese word Gung Ho into it's vocabulary, may have finally proved to the Arabs that they can out-hudna anyone who ever stood on a patch of sand. By alternately throttling and releasing the enemy, or in cruder terms, by a process of talking and shooting, the USMC seems to have squeegeed the foe into the 'Golan' without ever precipitating the feared crisis. ("Like a cut flower in a vase, fair to see, yet doomed to die" -- Winston Churchill)

Anesthetic applied before the dagger. Read, scroll, read the next; reread. Then skip cable news and enjoy the weekend. Needless to say, the Marines appear to be finishing the job the Army — whom my leatherneck coworker once called "only half-effective anyway" — didn't or wasn't allowed to do.

While the press whittles away at its story about ceasefires, withdrawals and Kofi Annan's finger-wagging, another Fallujah has been presented. This evening Fox News military analyst General Robert Scales described the Marines' slowly grinding the insurgents into pulp, removing their assets and sniping away at their ranks. He implored that "time is on our side." That concurs with Belmont Club, which speculated earlier today that the enemy, squeezed into a shrinking share of the city, has very few options indeed.

MORE: Through television reports, military spokesmen are still insisting that Marines moving out of the southeast industrial sector of the city are repositioning, not withdrawing.

AND MORE: Glenn Reynolds links to the concerns of American diffidence from Alaa and Andrew Sullivan, whom I read earlier this morning. What to think? From the start, most press agencies have misinterpreted every stage of the conflict, from the Blackwater atrocity to the action halt to the troop movements; mostly because the press is eager to identify circumstances as a failure or loss of control on the part of the Allies, but also due to a general lack of strategic military understanding. [Q. Why don't they put cool heads behind wire reports? A. Because newspapers sell better with a fresh calamity every morning! -ed] As the "ceasefire" demonstrated, appearances only describe part of the story.

My position on American restraint has been written. The enemies of a free Iraq, particularly Ba'athists hiding in shadows, are America's responsibility. But I read too much into the last apparent calm, and am resolved not to follow every news wave that predicts an inevitable conclusion to the matter in Fallujah — there will be only one and, frankly, we've been offered dozens. The press has cried wolf too many times. As for commentary, while there's opportunity in swiftness, there's virtue in assembling events into a narrative — and then evaluating the whole.

SPEAKING OF NARRATIVES: Victor Davis Hanson is vital reading for today. This is a war; our country has no choice but to win.

Zeyad, to put it mildly, gives the purported new Iraqi flag two thumbs down. Here's my order: traditional flag, extra nationalistic trimmings, well done; hold the overt religious symbols, please?