Josh Marshall writes:
That brings to six the number of US military or de facto US military (i.e., private security firm helicopters) shot down in Iraq in little more than two weeks.
There seems little doubt now that this is more than a statistical anomaly. But investigators still don't seem to have a clear grasp of what's happening. The one piece of information that appears relative clear is that this is not being caused by new weaponry. It's been accomplished with high-caliber machine gun fire in most or all cases. The insurgents are just getting better, or more aggressive, or more ominously, they're getting better at knowing where the helicopters are going to be.
This is actually a Very Big Deal. We've spent the last few years training an unknown number of eager jihadists on the ins-and-outs of terrorism and urban warfare. We should've known better. It's commonly understood that the modern jihadist movement -- al-Qaeda included -- sprung out of the Afghanistan War, where thousands of radicals spent years learning how to fight and damage an army far stronger and far better equipped than themselves. In Irag, the insurgents have learned the same thing.
We're never going to kill every insurgent, and after we leave, the innocents we've shot and children we've maimed and humiliations we've meted out will ensure a long and enduring legacy of hatred. The chaos of Iraq's broken society will, of course, offer few good options to males between the ages of 16 and 24, so hungry terrorist groups should find it a fertile recruiting ground. And, unlike in the past, these recruits will have already spent years training against the finest army in the world. That, day, by day, they're becoming more effective, more able to shoot down copters and detonate tanks and snipe patrols, is a terrifying glimpse of what the world has to look forward to.
