How do you judge the progress in Iraq? Insurgencies are difficult wars to gauge success or failure. The mere use of violence by insurgents threatens the legitimacy of the established government and makes for dramatic news, often clouding the real progress on the ground. One devastating car bomb can overshadow thousands of hours of positive hard work. Critics of the Iraq war seize on every attack as evidence Iraq is doomed for failure. However they fail to understand the “insurgents”, “freedom fighters”, “militants” and “rebels” do not offer any alternative to the interim Iraqi government, other than a return to a Baathist order or Zarqawi’s Fallujah, and because of this the movement is not a politically viable alternative to the current government.

Austin Bay, who served as a staff officer in Iraq, reinforces this point. He believes we are winning in Iraq and outlines why (hat tip to Instapundit):

Saddam's thugs and Zarqawi's klan were actually weak enemies -- "brittle" is the word I used to describe them at a senior planning meeting. Their local power was based on intimidation -- killing by car bomb, murdering in the street. Their strategic power was based solely on selling the false impression of nationwide quagmire -- selling post-Saddam Iraq as a dysfunctional failed-state, rather than an emerging democracy.

Some Iraqis recognize this and are beginning to challenge the terrorists' local power of intimidation:

Ordinary Iraqis rarely strike back at the insurgents who terrorize their country. But just before noon on Tuesday, a carpenter named Dhia saw a troop of masked gunmen with grenades coming toward his shop here and decided he had had enough.

As the gunmen emerged from their cars, Dhia and his young relatives shouldered their Kalashnikov rifles and opened fire, the police and witnesses said. In the fierce gun battle that followed, three of the insurgents were killed, and the rest fled just after the police arrived. Two of Dhia's nephews and a bystander were wounded, the police said.

"We attacked them before they attacked us,"

Dhia issues a bold challenge to the terrorists, reminiscent of the challenge issued to the murderers in Fallujah; “Brave terrorists, I am waiting here for the brave terrorists. Come and kill us”:

"We killed three of those who call themselves the mujahedeen," he said. "I am waiting for the rest of them to come, and we will show them."

The “brave mujahedeen” do not help their image by using civilians as human shields while cowering from the citizens who challenged them:

The owner said the gunman then shouted: "Keep me here for a short time until I can leave the area or I will kill you all. I don't want anyone to leave this room."

They obeyed. The gunman telephoned some friends and stayed for about an hour until they arrived to pick him up. Before he left, the owner of the house said, he issued a final warning: "If you scream or call the police, my friends will come and kill you. They know where you are."

The terrorists need to demonstrate their strength, and have proudly published pictures of their newly created training camps in Western Iraq. The Iraqi police, backed by Coalition forces, promptly sniffed one out and assaulted it, exacting a high price:

Iraqi officials said Wednesday 80 rebels died in the clash -- the largest number of rebels killed in a single battle since the U.S. Marine-led November attack on the former insurgent stronghold of Fallujah that left more than 1,000 dead. On Sunday, U.S. forces killed 26 assailants after they were ambushed south of Baghdad.

The proud “resistance” strikes back by taking time out of their schedule to target a school:

Also Wednesday, a mortar shell or rocket landed on an elementary school in western Baghdad, killing at least one child and injuring three others, according to a police official who asked not to be named out of fear of retribution by attackers. Kids fled the schoolhouse, abandoning backpacks and books on desks littered with glass shards. One teacher wept outside as parents rushed to collect their children.

Lobbing shells at schools and holding families hostage certainly will not win the hearts and minds of ordinary Iraqis. An effort is being made to expose the true nature of the "militants". One of the most popular shows on television in Iraq is "Terrorism in the Hands of Justice", where captured “fighters” are interrogated and confess to their crimes. The terrorists are depicted as depraved criminals often paid to kill their own countrymen, and this show appears to have gone a long way to dispel the myth that Baathists and al Qaeda are working in the Iraqi people's best interests.

An insurgency is only as powerful as its support among the native population. As the government begins to establish effective security forces and the citizens view their government as legitimate, they become increasingly aware of the depravity and nihilism offered by the insurgency and begin to sour towards the terrorists. This is a good way to determine the prospects for the future of Iraq.

Also Read:

This morning Charles Johnson of little green footballs reported on a disturbing image printed in an MIT publication called The Thistle which depicts American soldiers as pigs being murdered by the Iraqi "resistance" . The author of Rhetorical Flourishes, a member of the faculty of MIT, finds more anti-American images on The Thistle's server.

Will the United Nations pay for Oil for Palaces Food program manager Benon Sevan's legal fees, to the tune of about $300,000? The media grills UN Spokesman Fred Eckhard. Times are tough in Turtle Bay.