Best case against Al Qaeda is Al Qaeda

We are gaining in Iraq. The top insurgetn leader has decided to turn against Al Qaeda and work with the Irag government against them. Captains Quarters

And Michael Yon is on the ground in Iraq. He takes a broader, deeper look at the causes.

Michael Yon (part 1)

Any premature history of this war will be as simplistic as a woven carpet, but some patterns are clear even today: crushing Fallujah backfired. If only because the timing assured a near total Sunni boycott of the first and most important national election, the start of nation-building politics, the same process that is now so widely acknowledged as the only path to a secure and self-sufficient Iraq.

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Al Qaeda has a management style—doing drugs, laying up sloppy drunk, raping women and boys, and cutting off heads, all while imposing strict morality laws on the locals—that makes it clear that they have one set of principles for themselves, and another for every one else.

In that kind of scheme, it didn’t take long before people in Anbar realized that any benefits from Al Qaeda having control would not be distributed equally. Once that realization spread, the tribal sheiks—almost all Sunni—had to consider the alternatives.

Shattered headstones, like broken promises, warn of restless ghosts.

The sheiks of Anbar turned against al Qaeda because the sheiks are businessmen, and al Qaeda is bad for business.