Funmurphys: the Blog

A Metric For Victory?

Now that's what I call a provocative headline: Al Qaida Admits Defeat:

Many Moslems still support terrorism, just not in their neighborhood. But after watching what happened in Iraq and Saudi Arabia since 2003, Moslems can no longer be assured that, once unleashed, Islamic terrorism will only be carried out somewhere else. Moreover, years of al Qaeda boasting have failed the reality check. No amount of hot air and spin will change the fact that al Qaeda has accomplished none of its goals, and has gotten lots of Moslems killed in the process.

What Strategy Page is talking about is that the Islamic world as a whole no longer supports terrorism as a solution to their problems, even though some individual Moslems do.

As far as admitting defeat, that doesn't mean the fightings over though. And looking at WWII, the casualties went up as the war went on. Both the US and Japan took far more casualties after Midway than before, but at that point the handwriting was on the wall for the Japanese.