Sunnis Versus Al-Qaeda

The news that the Islamic Army of Iraq (one of the main Sunni insurgent groups) fought a battle against al-Qaeda for control of a Baghdad neighborhood would, in a decent world, put to a rest the idea that we’re fighting some consolidated “jihadist” menace in Iraq. We’re fighting a whole bunch of people. Many of those people are fighting other people who we’re also fighting. And only a tiny minority of the people we’re fighting in Iraq are even loosely tied to al-Qaeda.