I said many times last year the wave of Islamic rejection against al-Qaeda that began in Iraq would poor out across the Muslim world as stories of al-Qaeda’s bloody carnage played out in the Muslim street. When Iraq’s Sunnis turned on al-Qaeda it was a huge shift that was hard to envision happening, but once it did it would domino as the heros of Islam became those fighting and dying against al-Qaeda and the atrocities. It seems those predictions were spot on (and not all that hard to make given the mindset required to go from supporting fellow Muslims al-Qaeda to allying with the Great Satan America).

And one of the huge benefits of this spreading rejection as been the infiltration of al-Qaeda by intelligence agents working to bring down the fledgling and failing radical Muslim movement:

The 2004 al Qaeda decision to undertake a massive terror campaign in Iraq did much to reduce al Qaeda’s stature throughout the Arab world. Many al Qaeda members, and supporters became demoralized at the slaughter of so many Moslems, and the inability to kill many infidels (non-Moslems). Opinion surveys throughout the Moslem world clearly show al Qaeda popularity declining as the number of Moslem terror victims in Iraq increased. The same pattern could be seen on pro-al Qaeda web sites. Much of this chatter never got much exposure in the West, because most of it was in Arabic, and rarely monitored and translated by news organizations. But the number of Islamic radicals, unhappy with how Islamic terrorists have been operating, just keeps growing. This provided opportunities for Western intel agencies to get inside the terror networks.

Bush was right. Success in Iraq did result in a sea change in attitudes in the Muslim world as al-Qaeda was forced to expose their true nature and demonstrate to a gullible community how cruel and oppressive Bin Laden’s world would be if it came to pass. 7 years after 9-11 al-Qaeda is the enemy of Islam, not its future. And that is one hell of an accomplishment.