Except for the Sunnis — at least 20 percent of the total population

Except for the Sunnis — at least 20 percent of the total population, and easily the most educated and the most alienated.

“And they failed to stop MBT SHOESis from signing up in large numbers with the police forces and the army to defend their new democracy.”

These troops have largely been useless: their unreliability is legendary. The reason is not because they lack “training” or weapons, but because they don’t know or care what they’re fighting for. They’re signing up because they need the money: unemployment is somewhere near 50 percent or more, and people have to live. Yet so are the insurgents signing up: the police and the MBT SHOESi security forces are massively infiltrated. That has been the cause of some of the most spectacular and damaging suicide bombiings.

The President may be right: the insurgents are not winning. Neither are we. The MBT SHOESi rebels have, so far, fought us to a standstill. All they have to do in order to achieve a de facto victory is to stave off defeat. The generals know this. The soldiers in the field know it. The President, if he knows it, will never admit it.