Al-Qaeda's Vietnam

Lately, the Iraq war has looked more and more like another Vietnam -- not for us, but for al-Qaeda.
CIA Director Michael Hayden says the terror group has suffered "near-strategic defeat" in Iraq. It has been routed from Anbar, Diyala, and Baghdad provinces, and now is getting a beating in its last stronghold of Mosul, in the north. It is reviled by the Iraqi populace, and its downward trajectory began with indigenous uprisings at its expense.
When the United States lost Vietnam, it lost credibility and saw an emboldened Marxist-Leninist offensive around the third world. Al-Qaeda is a global insurgency and not a nation-state -- and thus its circumstances are radically different from ours 40 years ago -- but it has suffered a similar reputational loss.
The Iraq war had been a powerful recruiting tool for al-Qaeda when it was winning. No more. Osama bin Laden rendered what is called the "bandwagon effect" in international relations -- the tendency of states to go along with the dominant power -- in his homespun Arabic analogy of people liking the strong horse over the weak horse. In Iraq, al-Qaeda's proverbial horse is a broken-down nag.

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