al-Qaeda is losing ground among Muslims in ever increasing numbers. In Iraq the sinking of al-Qaeda, due to their violence and bloodlust, has turned the situation around to the point Iraqis are taking up arms to liberate themselves and their neighbors from al-Qaeda’s brutal control. When Iraqi mothers are demanding their children stay away from al-Qaeda you can tell this situation is totally at odds with the situation we see in Palestine, where kids shows are used as propaganda to recruit suicide bombers:

“Al Qaeda terrifies locals,” said Major Mike Garcia from Canyon, Texas, before he put me in a convoy of Humvees with 18 American military police on their way to the small town of Mushadah just north of Baghdad. “The only people Iraqis may be more afraid of is their mothers.

“When we arrest or detain people and threaten to call up their mom, they completely freak out. ‘Please, no, don’t tell my mother,’ they say,” Garcia continues. “Women are quiet outside the house, but they severely smack down their bad kids inside the house. When your Iraqi mother tells you to knock something off, you knock it off.”

At its core – the family unit – Iraq is turning on al-Qaeda. In fact, if we look at Lebanon, the other major battlefield in the region with al-Qaeda, we see the Lebanese people rallying around their army and shunning al-Qaeda.

Mustafa Borghol stares solemnly out from one of dozens of “martyr” portraits stuck to walls in this village in northern Lebanon. The 24-year-old Lebanese Special Forces soldier is the 10th resident of Bibnine to die in three months of bitter fighting between the Lebanese Army and the Al Qaeda-inspired militants of Fatah al-Islam in the Nahr al-Bared Palestinian refugee camp, just three miles from here.

“This village used to be famous for fishing and carpentry,” says Mohammed Borghol, Mustafa’s father, while sitting in his butcher shop. “Now it is famous for its martyrs, and we are very proud of them.”

With almost 150 soldiers having died in the worst internal violence since the end of the 1975-90 civil war, the Lebanese Army is being widely hailed as a unifying force in a country mired in deep political turmoil. Despite the high casualty count for the overstretched and underequipped Army, the imminent triumph against the militants has lifted the morale of a force that since 1990 has been overshadowed in military affairs by the Shiite militant group Hizbullah.

So, al-Qaeda is the enemy and the martyrs are the soldiers fighting them. This is a very big change in the view of the Muslim world and its relationship with al-Qaeda. Something that is catching the attention of Congress – finally:

After serving two weeks of reserve duty in Iraq, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) yesterday called for continuation of the “surge” of U.S. troops in Iraq and warned that any decision to mandate a withdrawal this year would undercut critical gains made in recent months.

…

“With all due respect to Senator Warner, the model he is suggesting — to put pressure [on the Iraqi government] by mandating troop withdrawal — is exactly the opposite of what we should do,” Graham said in an interview after returning from Iraq this past weekend. “I believe the pressure that will lead to reconciliation will not be from what an American politician thinks but what the Iraqi people think. And I’m confident that the Iraqi people have turned a corner.”

…

The major change from his earlier visits was produced by a confluence of factors, particularly as the deployment of more U.S. troops coincided with Iraqi reaction to al-Qaeda in Iraq excesses in trying to control the Sunni areas, Graham said.

“We can’t take credit for that. They tried to impose a lifestyle that is counter to what Iraqis wish for themselves,” he said. The Sunni insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq even tried to ban smoking, he noted. “So it was a magic meeting of the moment — with al-Qaeda overplaying its hand and [the United States] increasing its capacity.”

Clearly my senator from VA (Warner) needs a spine transplant. Hopefully he will listen to his colleague who has been on the ground and seen the new attitude permeating the Muslim street.