Long War: Sifting through Wiki-Leaks documents allows us to deduce that in 2005 Egypt's intelligence chief, Omar Suleiman, had his people reach out to Iraq's Sunni tribes and begin to convert them into US allies. This was the first step in creating the Sunni Awakening Movement, where the Sunni tribes rose up and crushed Al-Qaeda in Iraq. Without the Awakening Movement, America would have lost the Iraq War. Suleiman is a strategic genius, a Long War superhero who is now in charge of Egypt and bargaining with the Muslim Brotherhood. As the bargaining unfolds the Mullahs in Iran and Hezbollah are nervously reaching out to the Brotherhood, trying to stick a hand in the pie. The Brotherhood is slapping the hand away in fearful haste. Suleiman is famous for his white-hot hatred of Iran and the Brotherhood does not want to piss off the Egyptian leader.
And in Afghanistan we see Suleiman's Sunni Awakening Movement casting a long shadow over the bad guys. NATO commander Petraeus is finally stepping up his Afghan Local Police (ALP) program. ALP is based on the Awakening Movement. It involves Special Forces night raids that wipe out Taliban leaders in a given rural village. Special Forces then train local tribesmen to battle the Taliban as it regroups. This ends up devolving power away from Karzai's corrupt central government, slowly rebuilding Afghan society from the bottom up. Karzai is supposed to approve the expansion of ALP, which he grudingly is doing. It is unclear how Petraeus is pressuring Karzai, but somehow he is.
Petraeus is begining to give speeches to Congressmen and the media about Afghanistan, putting out the word that the good guys are winning. The Pentagon is under orders to ship soldiers home starting in July. The brass has a plan to ship a mere 5000 support troops home and replace them with private contractors. They know the media will see through this effort as a sham and are trying to create an atmosphere of wink, wink, nod, nod.
Petraeus understands that Americans are a warlike people, but Americans only like wars where the good guys are clearly winning and the bad guys are obliterated. The most popular war ever was the Spanish-American War. From a philosophical viewpoint it was completely immoral. Spain did nothing to America. Once the war was over, America seized Spain's colonies and did a horrible job of running them; a genuine travesty. But Spain's army was ripped apart like a Pit Bull tearing apart a toy poodle, very popular. The stock market and the American people want a repeat performance. So far so good.
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