It seems that al-Qaeda’s penchant for brutality continues even though it supposedly promised to stop targeting Iraqi Muslims in order to regain some standing in the Iraq Muslims community:

A couple and their son as well as a woman neighbour taking part in the fight against Al-Qaeda have been killed by gunmen near the restive Iraqi city of Baquba, police and relatives said on Tuesday.

“Armed men of Al-Qaeda attacked the home of Faraj Dahshem al-Zaydi in Sheikh village on Monday. They killed the 60-year-old man, his wife, their son Mustafa, 18, and a 35-year-old neighbour,” police Liutenant Colonel Najim al-Sumaidi told AFP.

“The armed men put the three members of the family in a room of their home and gunned them down,” he said.

This act will not endear Iraqis to al-Qaeda’s cause. It will probably move Iraqis to double their efforts to purge their country of these vermin. The fact a pack of armed men can raid a house of an old couple is not a demonstration of strength – it shows how weak and desperate al-Qaeda is now. They don’t fight armed Iraqis and they run from armed Americans. al-Qaeda is now left to prove its potency through attacks on unarmed or weakly armed civilians. How pathetic.

And on the flip side we see the US and Iraqi forces continue their sweep and rounding up (or killing preferably) of al-Qaeda’s remnants. And the larger picture of Iraq is not that poor family pushed up against the wall of their home and executed by petty thugs, it is that where al-Qaeda has been defeated there is a bright future being built for Iraqis:

I recently had the privilege of returning to Iraq and, more specifically, to Al Anbar province for my third tour. I say privileged for a number of different reasons, not the least of which is the opportunity to again serve with young Americans — the best of their generation — in combat.

…

I have been away for three years. What I have found in the week I have been back can only be described as shocking.

When I was here last, dozens of IEDs detonated every day in Al Anbar. Fire fights were as common as IEDs, and mortar and rocket attacks a nightly routine. The emirs of al-Qaida and other equally murderous groups predicted our imminent defeat as they pursued a sick form of extremism no rational man or woman here, or anyplace else, could fathom.

…

Several days ago I walked through the market section of Fallujah. It was bustling with Iraqis of all ages buying and selling products of every description. Adults waved, pressed forward to shake hands and many, like good businessmen everywhere, tried to make a sale. Kids swarmed around the Marines trying out the few English words they have learned in schools that now are all open. Parents no longer fear to send their boys and girls to learn, a practice that under the extremists often was a death sentence.

The change is not only stunning, it is so stark it seems to emphasize the different world’s that would exist under US alliance or al-Qaeda dominance. You can literally go from one part of Iraq to another and experience what those two worlds have to offer. The killers, torturers and rapists (forced marriages) that Code Pink and other nut cases claim exist are the acts of al-Qaeda, not US Marines from Beserkly, CA.

And while some liberal well-to-do’s with more time on their hands than brain power to fill that time may not get it, the Iraqis and the Muslims of the Middle East get it in spades. They see Fallujah springing to life in the areas al-Qaeda has been purged from and see the news about a family pushed up against the wall and executed. They can’t miss it, they have front row seats.

I would like to see al-Qaeda stopped, or them stop their killing, but that is because now each death they cause is not making any new points, it is simply emphasizing the truth: al-Qaeda exists to execute bloody and brutal dominance on people who are their betters. The word is their fighters are the down-trodden and poor. Well we now know it is a bunch of wealthy brutes who see themselves as the rulers of mankind inciting criminal losers into suicidal fervor to pay back those who succeeded in life (where they failed).

al-Qaeda cannot control these brutes because they are mindless, violent criminals. al-Qaeda is a path to fascism just like that under Hitler and his Nazis. And an alliance with America is the opposite choice. It is time Americans realized this and took pride in the choice they offer this world.