Dispatches from the Peoples’ War

Add Stratfor to the list of pundits veering sharply from bearish to bullish on Iraq. Success, as they say, has a thousand fathers. Failure grovels, disowned and bitter, for a dollop of gruel (more fun here). The best news of all is the role being played by the Iraqi people in turning against the terrorists, via this fascinating AP report:

The raid at Lake Tharthar in central Iraq turned up booby-trapped cars, suicide-bomber vests, weapons and training documents, Iraqi Maj. Gen. Rashid Feleih told state television. He said the insurgents included Iraqis, Filipinos, Algerians, Moroccans, Afghans and Arabs from neighboring countries. “What’s really remarkable is that the citizens this time really took the initiative to provide us with very good information,” Feleih said.

In three days, according to Iraqi and U.S. officials’ accounts, troops have killed at least 128 insurgents nationwide, culminating in the announcement of Tuesday’s attack by Iraqi commandos, backed by U.S. air and ground fire. On Sunday, U.S. soldiers killed 26 insurgents south of Baghdad, while a fight during an ambush on an Iraqi security envoy killed 17 militants on Monday.

“This string of successes does have positive repercussions in that it may convince Iraqis not supporting the insurgents but not supporting the United States either to perceive that the tide is turning and not go with the insurgents,” said [some Rand Corp wonk].

Read the rest on your own; you’ll be glad you did. (UPDATE III: Some are expressing doubts about this story; it depends on whether the AFP reporter found the right place, I guess). Meanwhile, Robert Kaplan–I’ve been a fan of Kaplan’s since he covered the Soviet-Afghan war in the 1980s–asks whether Syria is next. More here, from Claude Salhani.

UPDATE: Further evidence that the Iraqi people are fed up with Michael Moore’s minutemen. Jump, Michael.

UPDATE II: Now it looks like the Ba’athist faction of the insurgency is about to lose its political base. The Sunnis are forming a team to negotiate their way into the new government. Given the evidence that the al-Qaeda faction is almost universally loathed, even among the Sunnis, it’s great news, even if any good news from the Middle East merits caution.

UPDATE IV: The Financial Times says the Sunni insurgents are looking for an exit strategy. What makes me suspect that things would be very different if the election hadn’t gone the way it did? And I’m not talking about the Iraqi election, this time, although it certainly mattered very much.