In Iraq, a Victory, by Any Other Name..

A few days ago, the Jaish al-Mahdi militia of outlaw fighters who are loyal to Shi'a cleric Moqtada al-Sadr were forced to fall back and retreat from a six-day battle in Basra which the growing Iraqi national army launched against them to attempt to shake them out of entrenched positions (which, to a considerable, although not total, extent they succeeded in doing).

The Iraqis received only very limited assistance from United States forces, as U.S. commanders looked on to try and gauge how far along the rebuilding Iraqi military has come.

But of course, al-Sadr declared a victory.

Moqtada al-Sadr's strategy is simplicity itself. As long as he survives, and then releases an announcement to the media stating that he has, in fact, survived and that his JAM is still intact and willing to fight on, he can manipulate the media into accepting that he and his kind are winning-meaning that the United States, its allies, and the new Iraqi government are failures.

Al-Sadr uses the always-emerging disputes over hard numbers of casualties, captures, and total number of JAM troops in the field as fuel for the words-and-images fires that he sets ablaze.

What's more, al-Sadr uses the symbolism of his father's murder, which a great majority of Iraqis believe was carried out at the behest of Saddam Hussein, to galvanize new followers and fighters to take their places at his side.

Al-Sadr uses hit-and-run and extended periods of quiet invisibility to undermine the unifying political process that the new Iraqi government has been involved with since Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi stated that objective nearly four years ago. He wants to create an image of a never-ending military struggle that the current Iraqi government and its Western backers will tire of to the point of surrender.

These techniques, also employed by Al Qaida to an even greater extent before Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed by U.S. forces in 2006, have certainly worked with the Democrats in Washington, D.C. who have pessimistically and childishly declared an almost total U.S. "defeat" in Iraq for nearly as long as Iraq has been-very slowly and with much disruption, but steadily-engaged in the political process of uniting disparate splinter groups and enemies into one nation, but without the Stalinesque Socialist dictator who was Saddam Hussein.

The Western Defeatist Liberal media have largely taken al-Sadr's red meat bait.

The Western media journalists write immature and cowardly words, declare defeat while victory is still lacing up its boots, and stupidly invoke America's psychic poltergeist of Vietnam.

"[The] Iraqi offensive against Shi'ite militants in Basra [was] a defining moment...that underscored how worthless Iraqi's army and 'unity' government are five years into the war...Even after American and British troops moved in to mop up after faltering Iraqi forces, the fiasco still ended up with Shi'ite militants, led by an emboldened Moqtada al-Sadr, controlling Basra...And loyalists to the radical, anti-American cleric continue to assert themselves in other key cities in the oil-rich Shi'ite south as well as parts of Baghdad...It took 10 years and over 50,000 American deaths for the U.S. to recognize the futility of dying for a losing proposition in South Vietnam. How long will it take before we recognize the futility of dying for no-win sectarian violence in Iraq?"

Yet the facts are more like this: at least one neighborhood was cleared out of al-Sadr's JAM and a second one was falling to the Iraqi army when the cleric told his troops to stand down; there has been a large-scale retreat from Basra by the JAM because they were cut off from re-supplying; The Long War Journal has calculated that during the offensive 571 JAM fighters were killed, 881 were wounded, 490 were captured, and 30 surendered; and the towns of Hillah, Najaf, Karbala, Diwaniyah, Amarah, Kut, and Nasiriyah all saw the JAM driven from their streets.

It comes as no surprise to me that America's Liberal politicians -- who want to cut and run, make us hang our heads in shameful defeat, let our fallen soldiers die in vain, and allow Iraq to crumble into ruin and likely become occupied by Iran-wish to "negotiate" with people whose ideas are, by definition non-negotiable.

After all, both sides appeal to negative emotion in lieu of facts and manipulate words and images to try to get their way.

What's more-it often looks as though both sides want exactly the same thing.