Al Qaeda Captures Fallujah, Proclaims It An Islamic State

It’s a good thing “Bin Laden is dead and Al Qaeda is on the run“. Otherwise I’d be worried about the spread of Islamists and al Qaeda specifically

(Washington Post) A rejuvenated al-Qaeda-affiliated force asserted control over the western Iraqi city of Fallujah on Friday, raising its flag over government buildings and declaring an Islamic state in one of the most crucial areas that U.S. troops fought to pacify before withdrawing from Iraq two years ago.

The capture of Fallujah came amid an explosion of violence across the western desert province of Anbar in which local tribes, Iraqi security forces and al-Qaeda-affiliated militants have been fighting one another for days in a confusingly chaotic three-way war. (snip)

“At the moment, there is no presence of the Iraqi state in Fallujah,” said a local journalist who asked not to be named because he fears for his safety. “The police and the army have abandoned the city, al-Qaeda has taken down all the Iraqi flags and burned them, and it has raised its own flag on all the buildings.”

Al Qaeda affiliated groups, some just self-styled, have been spreading across the Middle East, Asia, and northern Africa. One of the fallacies coming from the groupthink of liberals ever since the US invaded Afghanistan post-9/11 and liberals turned on President Bush was that US forces should have just targeted Osama, because the war against al Qaeda would be over once he was dead. This was the Queen Bee Theory, where if you kill the queen bee, the hive dies. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way. It’s a great moral victory that Osama is dead. I have, and I will, give Obama props for killing him, even with all the controversy surrounding the mission and Obama’s role. Hey, he’s POTUS.

But killing Osama doesn’t end al Qaeda. It did fragment it, something which was happening going back to when he was on the run. The spread of Islamists, both the violent and non-violent types, has been going on for decades, it will continue to go on, since they “breed” like cockroaches, and too many refuse to believe that Islamists believe what they say regarding their aspirations.