Every report I can get from the folks on the ground in Iraq indicates that there has been a sudden shift in the environment of the battlefield.While many of the native Iraqi are uneducated, they’re not stupid. They do know who it is that is trying to build schools for their children and who it is that is trying to blow up those schools with their kids in them. Lately, there have been numerous occasions where hundreds of once hostile Sunni have turned on al Qaeda, ceased resistance, and are seeking to join government security forces and begging the Americans to protect them from both al Qaeda and Shiite militias.Field commanders are cautious. They know that if the Shiite dominated government in Baghdad stays vengeful for decades of past suffering at the hands of Sunni Baathists, the reconciliation will fail. Thus, many American officers and officials are doing all they can to urge ministries to start distributing at least some of the wealth of Iraq’s $80 a barrel oil revenues to Anbar and Diyala before the Sunni revert back to insurgency.br /br /This is a great opportunity. Let’s hope that there’s enough wisdom in Baghdad to exploit it and that our congress doesn’t deliberately sabotage it.
