Strategic significance

Strategic significance of the Iraqi constitutional referendum seems to have been missed by the mainstream press, their focus being on aspects of lesser importance.  They cling so doggedly to the notion that the war in Iraq is a diversion from the War on Terror.  The New York Times headlined coverage of yesterday's constitutional referendum, Turnout Is Mixed as Iraqis Cast Votes on Constitution.  Right.  Mixed.

There were pockets where turnout appeared quite heavy. At one precinct in Sadr City, the giant slum area where as many as half of Baghdad's five million people live, 1,750 of the 2,400 registered voters cast ballots by late afternoon, a turnout of 73 percent.

In one story the Washington Post reported the day's violence along with the current tally of American casualties since fighting in Iraq began.  In another story the Post reported that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice expects the vote to result in approval of the constitution, but the tone of the article is captured in this sentence.

Rice denied that a rejection of the constitution would be a setback.

For a different perspective I often visit the Belmont Club.  In a post titled The End of the Beginning, the Wretchard provides that different perspective by putting the election into a strategic context.  He begins,

In a situation rich with irony, voting was heavy in the former rebel stronghold of Fallujah, secured by the USMC in November 2004. Most of the Fallujans chose to reject the proposed Iraqi constitution, though the nationwide results are expected to heavily confirm it. US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad didn't seem to mind whether people voted for or against the proposed constitution, so long as they voted.

The mainstream press prefers to focus on the violence.  Their premise has always been that the terrorists drive the conflict.  A Kerry/Edwards campaign staple from a year and a half ago was that the Bush Administration had no plan to win the peace.  The press continue to report as if that were true -- as if the reduced level of violence on election day was merely a whim of the terrorists and we react to their whims as best we can.  To read MSM reports one would be hard pressed to believe that an Iraqi army has been trained, and that they are taking over more and more of the fight as Americans step back.   By headlining the story "Turnout Is Mixed...", the Times holds out faint hope that a less than massive Iraqi voter turnout will revive liberal predictions of "quagmire".   

Wretchard doesn't see it in the cards.

...there remained the hope that the terrorist model of warfare, forged in Algeria and refined against Israel in Lebanon, would bring America to a halt: that rogue regimes acting discreetly could operate within that strategic shadow. Now, for the first time since Algeria, a terrorist force of the highest quality, supported by contributions from oil-rich countries, in the heart of the Arab world, with sanctuary in a friendly regime across the border and eulogized as "freedom fighters" by dozens of major international publications is on the verge of total and ignominious defeat. There are no more strategic shadows.

By taking the fight to Iraq Bush has forced the terrorists to fight for their own turf.  Unlike Vietnam and Korea, this war does not constrain the American military with a Demiliterized Zone or a 38th Parallel beyond which they may not pass.  The rules of this engagement provide for no terrorist safe havens.  The true lesson of Vietnam is that American military might can't be defeated by an insurgent army.  To defeat America the terrorists must wage and win the war of public opinion, and they are failing to win that fight. 

Thus the terrorists are faced with military defeat, but for us military defeat of the terrorists is not enough. As Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice put it in London,

"Ultimately, insurgencies have to be defeated politically. You defeat them by sapping them of their political support, and increasingly Iraqis are throwing their support behind the political process, not behind the violence," she said on the last stop of her week-long tour of Central Asia, Afghanistan and Europe.

That's why the elections are such a huge defeat for the terrorists.  Sunni voter turnout marks a turning point in the War on Terror, because it says terrorism as a political strategy is at the beginning of its end.  But as Wretchard says, the War on Terror itself is only nearing the end of its beginning.  There's still a long way to go, but the chances we'll see an end to it got a huge boost from the Sunni Arabs of Iraq.  They voted.