Generation Kill is a HBO miniseries about a platoon of marines involved in the 2003 invasion of Iraq. In Ireland, it’s shown on FX on Sky Digital (channel 164). If you have any interest in the Iraq war, or like war movies, or just like good television, then you should probably check it out. It’s the best thing I’ve seen on TV in years.

Here’s an NYTimes review in case you want to read more about it.

A Sunni faction has killed 18 al-Qaeda militants in an attack on a compound near the Iraqi city of Samarra, police have said.

Another 16 al-Qaeda members were said to have been captured in the attack.

The Sunni Islamic Army of Iraq – once part of the insurgency against US-led forces – said its fighters attacked the compound east of the city.

The faction is one of several Sunni former insurgent groups that have now turned against al-Qaeda.

Aren’t events like this clear evidence that the Iraqis are now standing up, thus enabling the US military to stand down, to use the Bush administration’s own rhetoric? Furthermore, don’t these instances of Sunnis opposing Al Qaeda completely give the lie to the oft-peddled notion that, if the US leaves, Iraq will descend into a safe haven for terrorists? The Shia hate Al Qaeda, the Kurds hate Al Qaeda, and now it increasingly seems that the Sunni, too, hate Al Qaeda and everything its benighted world-view entails. There may well be a civil war if the US pulls out of Iraq, but once the fighting dies down and the country is partitioned to some extent, then no sector of the new state (or states) will welcome or even tolerate these dangerous fools.

This reverse for Al Qaeda in the Sunni areas of Iraq is representative of it main problem worldwide, which is that no sensible person can go along with its idiotic and backward prescriptions, or at least not for very long. As far as I’m aware, all the terrorists responsible for its barbaric outrages have been young men who were, to some extent, indoctrinated into their twisted religious fervour, be it by vicious Wahabism or radical clerics exploiting a sense of alienation among young Muslims in non-Muslim countries. How many of these men would have felt the same way have they lived for five more years? Granted, some might have felt the same, but I expect quite a few if not most of them would have grown up a little bit.

The fact of the matter is that, in as much as there is a “War on Terror” between the US and, to some extent, the Western world, against Islamic terrorists, the US and her allies, standing for personal liberty, democracy, and secularism, are unequivocally on the good side, and the terrorists, standing for theocracy, repression, and intolerance, are unequivocally on the bad side. And no amount of incompetent blundering by the US or media-savvy propaganda from Al Qaeda can change that.