al-Qaeda’s core misjudgment has always been the masses are impressed or cowed by violence. They are neither really. Like any creature that is threatened violence can erupt from the most peaceful at heart if survival is at stake. And while some are cowed, many others become angry and motivated when threatened.

al-Qaeda naively believes that violence against America and the West, which impressed and rallied many extremists in the Muslim world, would still impress once it was applied against the Muslim world itself. They could not have been more wrong. And when they realized this they moved from trying to impress to oppress, which only created a stronger backlash

I also have long held the history of the liberation of Iraq will not be told by the blind and biased SurrenderMedia, but by the personal stories of the Muslim Iraqis who went from allies of al-Qaeda, to victims of al-Qaeda, to heros fighting al-Qaeda. I said the stories coming out of Iraq would be of brutal oppression and heroic courage in fighting off the oppressors. And so it is today with a big story in the UK Times about one such man who left al-Qaeda to fight al-Qaeda:

As a loyal officer under Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi major never imagined that one day he would become an insurgent, but when Iraq fell five years ago he was left bitter, jobless and desperate to drive the invading forces out.

“I saw my country collapse right in front of my eyes,” said Abu Abdullah, who has since orchestrated countless attacks against the US military, spent time in the notorious Abu Ghraib detention centre and briefly joined forces with al-Qaeda.

…

He, like many Sunni Arab officers and other Saddam supporters, resorted to guerrilla warfare to kill better-equipped US soldiers but gradually found that his nationalistic resistance had fallen under the control of the militant Islamists of al-Qaeda.

Appalled at the cruelty of attacks sponsored by al-Qaeda, Mr Abdullah switched sides recently and is cooperating, albeit reluctantly, with the US military as part of a grassroots security drive that has spread across Iraq.

Another group never understood this dichotomy between America and al-Qaeda: the SurrenderMedia who keeps pushing for America to lose in the face of the more popular al-Qaeda. But as with this Iraqi it was not to be so.

This man understands, but the media has not yet plumbed the depths of this phenomena I noted a year ago. What kind of cruelty does it take for people to align with invaders who they have been told are the most evil people on the planet? What does it take for a Muslim to turn on his Muslim allies and fight along side those ‘christian crusaders’. I noted this last year when the Anbar Awakening took off, that this kind of change was dramatic and rare. To repulse the Sunni extremists to the point Americans looked like the preferred choice means al-Qaeda’s brutality has not been explored or exposed fully to the public.

This phenomena is growing outside Iraq and across the region. al-Qaeda’s depravity seems to know no bounds. And the horror stories sweeping the Muslim community regarding children, families and parents is enough to make those hardened under Saddam’s brutality repulse.

That is why I have been so confident about how things would proceed in Iraq and elsewhere. When you see an event like this, where switching sides doesn’t involve a casual decision but to go against everything you have ever been taught and lived by, then you know the sea change coming is big and permanent.

The liberals in America can only hope they can hold off a similar awakening washing across America. Because a lot of people are going to look at this story, understand it to its core, and realize how wrong the SurrenderMedia and Surrendercrats were. Especially when they realize they don’t have to become full fledged right wingers to make the change of heart. It will take longer for this to happen because the revulsion with bloody carnage is not the same with revulsion with trying to find defeat in the midst of a swelling success. But it will happen. The question is whether it will happen before November 2008 or not.

Because between now and then we will see more of this. The UK Times simply reported another story (out an endless pool of them) on how al-Qaeda lost Islam so completely that Islam started taking up arms against al_Qaeda.