For some weeks there have been reports that foreign jihadis are departing Iraq in increasing numbers to join their fellow believers in Afghanistan. According to The Washington Post, Al-Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Ayyub al-Masri himself has recently relocated. With security improving in Iraq, Americans with neocon leanings have predictably announced that “victory” is at hand.
This is the same as if Roosevelt would’ve declared the Pacific War won when the last Japanese was killed on Guadalcanal.
Just as President George W. Bush himself has always spoken of his “global war on terror” as a multi-front struggle, Iraq for al-Qaeda has been but one battlefield among many. For bin Laden, it has never been the central front, but rather a useful sideshow, an unexpected opportunity to bleed the stumbling superpower even more. And it has been a spectacular success: thousands of Americans have died, Iraqi deaths probably number at least 100,000, billions of dollars have been wasted, resources have had to be diverted from Afghanistan, and America’s image as a beacon of democracy has suffered irreparable damage.
Only fools believe al-Qaeda’s local affiliates really sought to establish a Salafi state in Iraq. The jihadis knew that once the U.S. realised what it was up against and harnessed its military might to fight a counterinsurgency, it would all be over. Iraq was nothing more than a country-sized training ground for terrorist tactics, and the surge provided the trainees with their last live targets before the real deal — Afghanistan.
“Iraq was nothing more than a country-sized training ground for terrorist tactics, and the surge provided the trainees with their last live targets before the real deal — Afghanistan.”
Pretty painful training ground… The US has lost credibility, resources and lives in Iraq and so has Al Qaeda. I think Iraq was significantly more painful for Al Qaeda than you let on.
You may be right. I don’t profess to know the pain threshold of a terrorist network. But from what I’ve read and observed, it seems casualties don’t really matter, as manpower is readily available in every slum, refugee camp and lawless territory in the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia. The credibility issue, of course, is more difficult, as anyone who has followed the recent Bergen-Wright-Scheuer et. al. debate knows. For a much more prescient view, see http://www.jihadica.com.
“Iraq for al-Qaeda has been but one battlefield among many. For bin Laden, it has never been the central front, but rather a useful sideshow, an unexpected opportunity to bleed the stumbling superpower even more.”
Am I just mistaken, or has the Al-Qaida leadership itself stated on many occasions -officially and through captured communications- that victory in Iraq is central to the fight against Western forces?
It appears to me that since they have been handed one defeat after another in Iraq, that a retreat to another front line close by is the only course to follow.
If so, please provide links and we’ll talk more.
http://www.defenddemocracy.org/quotations/quotations_show.htm?doc_id=165459
“The most important and serious issue today for the whole world is this Third World War, which the Crusader-Zionist coalition began against the Islamic nation. It is raging in the land of the two rivers [Iraq]. The world’s millstone and pillar is in Baghdad, the capital of the caliphate.”
12/28/2006
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/013/900tybar.asp?pg=2
“Likewise, here is how Ayman al Zawahiri described the war in Iraq in a letter to Abu Musab al Zarqawi, then al Qaeda’s chief terrorist in Iraq, in 2005″:
“I want to be the first to congratulate you for what God has blessed you with in terms of fighting battle in the heart of the Islamic world, which was formerly the field for major battles in Islam’s history, and what is now the place for the greatest battle of Islam in this era.”
Also from the same communications captured but in more full detail:
http://www.defenddemocracy.org/publications/publications_show.htm?doc_id=511298
Ayman al-Zawahiri
Letter to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi
Recovered during military operations in Iraq
July 9, 2005
The Jihad in Iraq requires several incremental goals: The first stage: Expel the Americans from Iraq. The second stage: Establish an Islamic authority or emirate, then develop it and support it until it achieves the level of a caliphate — over as much territory as you can to spread its power in Iraq….The third stage: Extend the jihad wave to the secular countries neighboring Iraq. The fourth stage…the clash with Israel…The mujahedeen must not have their mission end with the expulsion of the Americans from Iraq, and then lay down their weapons, and silence the fighting zeal.
Also:
http://www.heritage.org/Research/Iraq/wm1210.cfm
“Bin Laden quickly grasped that Iraq was a more important front than Afghanistan in his global jihad and ordered many al-Qaeda forces to move there from Afghanistan in 2003. According to Taliban sources cited by Newsweek, bin Laden sent emissaries to meet with Taliban leaders in November 2003 to inform them that al-Qaeda was shifting resources and men from Afghanistan to Iraq.
In view of the high priority that al-Qaeda accords to Iraq, the U.S. cannot discount Iraq’s importance in the global struggle against terrorism. Premature withdrawal from Iraq would demoralize the Iraqi government, tempt Iraqi officials to strike deals with insurgents or defect to the insurgency, and embolden al-Qaeda and other Islamic militants to escalate their terrorist campaign using Iraq as a sanctuary.”
Re: Zawahiri letter: I stand corrected.
However, your second source sounds tailor-made to support the neocon view that Iraq was always a natural part of Bush’s “GWOT” and that withdrawal would be “surrender”. As we know, there was never any Saddam-Osama nexus, and the jihadi problem in Iraq was created by the American bungling of post-invasion security.
The fact remains that Al-Qaida has seen in Iraq, that, which it was unable to achieve in Afghanistan. Many detractors of the war in Iraq say that AQ had hoped all along for a US led Iraq invasion, in order to do to them what the mujadeen did to the Soviets…..which of course goes to underline Iraq’s central importance to AQ.
Also, what do you mean by “Neocon”, I find it to be a word that holds many a different meaning.
I mean the neo-conservative ideology, as evidenced by your choice of sources, e.g. The Weekly Standard and The Heritage Foundation. I think a bit of old-fashioned nonpartisanship would serve this conversation better.
I don’t think that the nexus between the two is too far fetched:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,200908,00.html
I’m not saying it’s conclusive, but it would stand to reason that Baathists and jihadists could stomach the other when it served their purposes.
In other words, non-rightwing source material is more palatable?
No, I find left-wing material just as suspect, but I have to admit I don’t have much of a stomach for Fox News.
Gee, what sources of information would suffice then? I always thought that the credibility of a news organization rests solely upon the facts vetted for accuracy.
I totally agree, hence my distrust of Fox News and many of the other sources in your comments.
Of course Al Qaeda doesn’t have limitless manpower. And more importantly, they don’t have limitless resources.
Also, I’m by no means a neo-con, but it seems like a cop-out not to address an argument because it is ideologically based.
By the way, thanks for the Jihadica link–interesting reading.
“Of course Al Qaeda doesn’t have limitless manpower. And more importantly, they don’t have limitless resources.”
Perhaps not limitless, but as any student of terrorism can tell you, these networks are pretty self-perpetuating as long as the root causes — poverty, repression, corruption — remain. See the new West Point study I linked to for more information on blowback.
“Also, I’m by no means a neo-con, but it seems like a cop-out not to address an argument because it is ideologically based.”
If by “cop-out” you mean my dismissal of the argument that Saddam and bin Laden were in cahoots, well, by all means, call it a cop-out.
I spent some of my youth in the academia, and one of the lessons I came back with was that indeed, you don’t have to address every argument. For example, you could argue that Earth is resting in space on the back of a giant turtle; I wouldn’t have any first-hand empirical evidence to disprove your theory, yet to engage in debate over it would be meaningless.
Similarly, I don’t have the time or the energy, in 2008, to argue with people who watch Fox News and read Laurie Mylroie and believe there was a nexus between Saddam and al-Qaeda. If by now they don’t know better, it’s not because their notion hasn’t been disproved time and again but because they choose to see the world through the ideological prism of The Weekly Standard.
As you know, blogs are intensely personal affairs. I set up this one to provide interesting links to stuff I read and maybe, on a rare occasion, some insight into subjects I actually know something about — not to spend my time responding to rubbish. You can call it a cop-out; I call it a choice.
Point conceded.