Da Techguy's (no longer backup) Blog

Q: How do we know that Al Qaeda is losing the war in Iraq bitterly?

What type of thing; suddenly changing their beliefs to suit their current needs:

Zawahiri’s Wife Releases Statement, Tells Women They Can Be Suicide Bombers

How about that, Islamic Misogyny no longer extends to blowing oneself up.

It reminds me of the story of Pat Cleburne one of the greatest generals the confederacy and his Jan 1864 pragmatic letter concerning freeing and enlisting Blacks en masse into the confederate armies that said in part:

The President of the United States announces that ‘he has already in training an army of 100,000 negroes as good as any troops,’ and every fresh raid he makes and new slice of territory he wrests from us will add to this force. Every soldier in our army already knows and feels our numerical inferiority to the enemy….Our single source of supply is that portion of our white men fit for duty and not now in the ranks. The enemy has three sources of supply: First, his own motley population; secondly, our slaves; and thirdly, Europeans whose hearts are fired into a crusade against us by fictitious pictures of the atrocities of slavery, and who meet no hinderance from their Governments in such enterprise, because these Governments are equally antagonistic to the institution. In touching the third cause, the fact that slavery has become a military weakness, we may rouse prejudice and passion, but the time has come when it would be madness not to look at our danger from every point of view, and to probe it to the bottom. Apart from the assistance that home and foreign prejudice against slavery has given the North, slavery is a source of great strength to the enemy in a purely military point of view, by supplying him with an army from our granaries; but it is our most vulnerable point, a continued embarrassment, and in some respects an insidious weakness….Like past years, 1864 will diminish our ranks by the casualties of war, and what source of repair is there left us?….

The Constitution of the Southern States has reserved to their respective governments the power to free slaves for meritorious services to the State. It is politic besides. For many years, ever since the agitation of the subject of slavery commenced, the negro has been dreaming of freedom, and his vivid imagination has surrounded that condition with so many gratifications that it has become the paradise of his hopes. To attain it he will tempt dangers and difficulties not exceeded by the bravest soldier in the field….The slaves are dangerous now, but armed, trained, and collected in an army they would be a thousand fold more dangerous; therefore when we make soldiers of them we must make free men of them beyond all question, and thus enlist their sympathies also….

Cleburne’s letter’s language seems outrageous to us today for it’s defense of slavery as an institution; it was even more outrageous to those he served with. So much so it was suppressed and although one of the best field generals produced by the south, Cleburne never received further promotion. Imagine instead that Cleburne was in Hood’s place at the start of Sherman’s offensive vs Joe Johnson or in his place after Johnson’s relief.

The South eventually authorized Black troops a month before Lee’s surrender. Lincoln commented that if the slaves were conscripted into the Confederate armies they could not also grow foodstuffs for them. It signified the south reaching the limit of their last reserves. If Al Qaeda is recruiting women for bombings that suggests the same.

If this isn’t a good sign for us then I don’t know what is.

Update: Rush is leading with this today.