http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=12199252
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/07/25/news/policy.php
“The same folks that are bombing innocent people in Iraq were the ones who attacked us in America on September the 11th.”
- George W. Bush, July 2007
Completely ridiculous, and it shows how desperate the Commander in Chief is to maintain some kernels of support for his failed war. We've heard this tune before, namely in the 2003 build-up. Once the allegation that Saddam had a hand in 9/11 was mostly refuted, Bush and company denied that they claimed a "direct" link between the two! Currently, the only way he hopes to get the war-weary and incredulous American public and Congress to give him yet more time on Iraq is to exaggerate the Al Qaeda connection. Although he may truly believe that our national security hinges on defeating militants in Iraq, to some of us it comes off as sleazy fear-mongering and preying on people’s lingering 9/11 trauma. He has already beaten the dead horse of “If we retreat from Iraq, the terrorists will follow us home,” yet no credible experts believe this would happen. So just in case we forgot from years of 9/11 fatigue, Bush argues that the current fighters in Iraq are capable of repeating 9/11 should we bail out prematurely. Of course he never considers the possibility that our protracted military presence in the Middle East may actually increase the likelihood of another 9/11 more than our withdrawal.
For Bush to claim that the current group of fighters in Iraq had anything to do with 9/11 and Osama is like saying present-day Roman Catholics share blame for the Crusades. They might espouse some of the same ideologies of past members, but their goals, capabilities, and demographics are totally different now. Maybe if the new Al Qaeda in Iraq got the chance to attack America with a WMD, they might take it. But even though they may have the desire, they probably don’t have the ability. A lot of people in Muslim ally nations such as Egypt, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia also equally hate America, but are we worried that they will follow us home too? Plus they have more pertinent fish to fry, like winning the power struggle in Iraq. In all likelihood, our vacancy from Iraq will leave a vacuum where the rival factions will battle each other for dominance, not unify to make revenge attacks on America. It will be horrible and bloody, but probably localized, and not spreading all over the Middle East as the Bushies assert. We shouldn’t just abandon and ignore Iraq (even if the going has gotten really tough), and many negative things could happen if we leave them to their own devices, but it doesn’t help Iraqi stability for Bush to harp on unlikely doomsday scenarios.
It is a valid point to make that this new generation of militants and extremists might pose a threat to America some day. And of course the White House will never admit that our invasion and botched occupation of Iraq, as well as our poor conduct in the larger War on Terror, inspired a large number of previously nonviolent/nonaligned people to join or at least condone Al Qaeda in Iraq. If Bush is really serious about defending America from pressing threats, then maybe he should stop digging up the past (especially since 9/11 is irrelevant to the current Iraqi civil war) and start figuring out how to stabilize Iraq and respond to Al Qaeda of TODAY.
The phony Gulf of Tonkin incident brought America into the Vietnam War. Yellow journalism drummed up support for the crooked Spanish-American War. But eventually Truman saw through the smoke and MacArthur’s antics to conclude that the Korean War wasn’t worth expanding the fight to China. And after Pearl Harbor, it was clear to Roosevelt and the US public that we had to stand up to Japanese and Nazi aggression. There are wars of necessity, and then everything else. Some warmongering leaders love to confuse one for the other. Let’s hope that truth does not continue to become a war casualty in Iraq as well.
It’s amazing to witness the nomenclature shift as the Pentagon and White House attempt to characterize our enemies in Iraq, depending on the prevailing political winds. In 2003, they were ex-Baathists and Saddam loyalists. In 2005, they were “insurgents” (the broadest and probably most accurate description, since the militants in Iraq are far from homogeneous). In 2006, they were sectarian death squads and Iranian proxies. Now in 2007, they are “Al Qaeda” (allegedly hand-in-glove with Osama and Zawahiri). Talk about flip-flopping. Previous reports suggested that fewer than 10% of fighters in Iraq are foreign-born, and only a small portion of the anti-coalition insurgency had any plausible link to Al Qaeda, Zarqawi, and the like. Most of them are not vile, plotting killers like “The Jackal”. Probably they are outraged by Western powers occupying Muslim lands, and will use violence to oust us.
According to Bush, the fact that Osama designated the small-time Jordanian thug Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi as Al Qaeda’s face in Iraq proves the connection between the Iraqi militants and the global struggle against Al Qaeda. It’s true that Zarqawi trained fighters, orchestrated/participated in attacks, and created a climate of fear and mystique around him. But of course Zarqawi did not command the entire Iraqi insurgency, nor all the Jihadist elements in the country. It’s not like he opened up a massive terrorism academy right under the coalition’s nose, and they all pledge allegiance to him. Soldiers of fortune, sectarian militants, and anti-American fighters were passing though Iraq’s porous borders for years – it’s impossible for one man to control such a force. Iraq has become the Mos Eisley Cantina of the Muslim world (pardon the Star Wars nerdism), with a ragtag amalgam of degenerates, Islamists, and other militants each fighting for their specific flag. Some come for Jihad (against Muslim heretics or Westerners alike), some come to fight for Arab autonomy against Crusaders, some come for training/experience to use elsewhere, and some come to sway the balance of power among Iraq’s rival factions (or possibly at the behest of Iran). Some might get involved with “Al Qaeda affiliates”, but they are not exactly regimented and organized.
And even that designation is misleading; what exactly constitutes an Al Qaeda affiliate? I dare anyone in the administration to formulate a coherent answer. But we don’t even have a firm grip of what Al Qaeda is – how can we claim to know that they are actively operating in Iraq? Anyone against us is somehow labeled as Al Qaeda or Iran sympathizers, and part of the greater Axis of Evil. Apparently Hizbullah and Hamas are in league with Al Qaeda and Iran too. Sharing a common goal and enemy doesn’t make people comrades. The US and Russia distrusted (if not hated) each other during WWII, but made a temporary truce to defeat Hitler. After 1944, they went back to hating each other for another 50 years. If somehow Israelis and Americans vacated the Middle East tomorrow, do you think all those terrorist groups would get along in harmony and collectively plot to attack America? They would be too busy fighting each other for supremacy! Some fighters in Iraq bear a “resemblance” to Al Qaeda, in terms of their combat methods, culture, nationality, religious beliefs, and methods of procuring resources. But again, the resemblances are very GENERAL and VAGUE. Depending on how you describe people, you can create similarities out of nothing. Is George Bush an Al Qaeda affiliate just because he is deeply religious, refuses to acknowledge the humanity of his enemies, and uses violence against innocents to achieve political objectives? You get my drift.
In fact, the Zarqawi-Osama relationship is fragile at best. Yes it’s true that the two had met face-to-face on several occasions. Yes it’s true that Zarqawi was in Iraq prior to the 2003 US invasion, but operated in the ungoverned areas of Iraq and had no contact with Saddam or Osama. As the insurgency morphed into sectarian civil war, Osama became increasingly disappointed with the loose cannon Zarqawi, who seemed more interested in butchering Shias (possibly in response to the virtual Shia takeover of the Iraqi government) than fighting American imperialists. In 2004, Osama did appoint Zarqawi as Al Qaeda’s representative in Iraq, but Zarqawi’s later actions and subdued presence prior to his death suggested that he was not carrying out Osama’s bidding, and may have proved more trouble than he was worth. His very notoriety rendered him less effective in carrying out Al Qaeda’s objectives in Iraq. Since then, Osama has probably anointed other agents to serve his interests there, but the connections are hazy. The very de-centralized, diverse, and unregulated nature of Al Qaeda is their strength, and makes them so elusive and dangerous. Therefore, it’s ridiculous for Bush and company to paint them as a unified, cohesive, contiguous enemy all over the world.
"They know they're al Qaeda, the Iraqi people know they're al Qaeda, people across the Muslim world know they're al Qaeda," Bush insisted. The very fact that the West is so scared of this Al Qaeda entity (and it’s on the news nonstop) makes small-time terrorists and wanna-bes seek to claim membership or affiliation. When the Bloods and Cripps were waging gang war in California in the 1990s, people all over the place took interest and claimed membership, even if they had nothing to do with the feud. But it was “cool” to act like you were part of an organization that was causing so much buzz and fear among people (even though the chances of being killed by a gangster were next to nil if you didn’t live in the ghetto). Half of the people who might profess to be Al Qaeda (or even had a part in 9/11) are phonies and lesser threats (if a threat at all). Take Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/2811855.stm). He was a petty thug with delusions of grandeur, yet the Western media and governments made him out to be a sinister arch-villain. Six years later, we have barely prosecuted anyone over 9/11, so we needed a scapegoat. We threw the book at KSM, and he gladly accepted! He craves to be a big-shot terrorist and Jihadi martyr (the “mastermind” of 9/11!), and we played right into his hands (not to mention that his confessions were also probably coerced with torture). The specter of Al Qaeda makes posers want to be them, and makes us chase mirages. I’m not saying that Al Qaeda isn’t a serious concern and danger; we all know it is. We shouldn’t just dismiss them, but misidentifying them doesn’t help either. It’s like the boy who cried wolf. If we keep chasing the faux terrorists, will we be ready when the graver threats emerge?
Our hysteria over Al Qaeda draws interest to them, and may actually increase support among the true members. We’re turning them into pop stars. But do we really have a firm grasp of what Al Qaeda is? A 2004 BBC documentary questions whether Bush and company are chasing a red herring and totally mischaracterizing the terror threat.
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http://www.thenation.com/doc/20050124/scheer0111
http://www.reallynews.com/video/pon/powerofnightmares.htm
Talking points from the article:
If Osama bin Laden does, in fact, head a vast international terrorist organization with trained operatives in more than forty countries, as claimed by Bush, why, despite torture of prisoners, has this Administration failed to produce hard evidence of it?
How can it be that in Britain since 9/11, 664 people have been detained on suspicion of terrorism but only seventeen have been found guilty, most of them with no connection to Islamist groups and none who were proven members of Al Qaeda?
Why did Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld claim on Meet the Press in 2001 that Al Qaeda controlled massive high-tech cave complexes in Afghanistan, when British and US military forces later found no such thing?
Terrorism is deeply threatening, but it appears to be a much more fragmented and complex phenomenon than the octopus-network image of Al Qaeda, with bin Laden as its head, would suggest.
Consider, for example, that neither the 9/11 commission nor any court of law has been able to directly take evidence from the key post-9/11 terror detainees held by the United States. Everything we know comes from two sides that both have a great stake in exaggerating the threat posed by Al Qaeda: the terrorists themselves and the military and intelligence agencies that have a vested interest in maintaining the facade of an overwhelmingly dangerous enemy.
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http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=12173643
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=12091942
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9923902
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9008784
From NPR:
President Bush and other supporters of the surge in Iraq say that if U.S. troops withdraw, the terrorists "will follow us home." But many military and intelligence analysts say the U.S. presence in Iraq - and elsewhere in the Middle East - is what really upsets the terrorists and mobilizes their base.
"There's no national security analyst that's really credible who thinks that people are going to come from Iraq and attack the United States, that that's a credible scenario," said retired Army Lt. Col. James Carafano, a specialist in international security threats at the conservative Heritage Foundation.
Paul Pillar, a former deputy CIA counterterrorism chief who now teaches at Georgetown University, says that logic requires the belief that there is a fixed number of terrorists out there to bedevil the United States.
"And we are either engaging them or killing them in Iraq or they're doing something else," Pillar said. "Well, we don't have a fixed number, of course, and the longer that we stay engaged in what has become in the eyes of the Islamist jihadists the biggest and foremost jihad, namely Iraq, the more likelihood we will breed even more terrorists."
"That horse has already left the barn," argues Thomas X. Hammes, a retired Marine colonel and professor at the National Defense University. Hammes says Iraq-trained or Iraq-inspired terrorists have already carried out attacks in places such as London, Spain and Bali. The recent terror attack at Glasgow airport is a case in point, he says.
And Ray Takeyh, an Iran expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, says the White House presents the best evidence to the contrary. "One of the indications of success that the administration is presenting is that in Anbar province, the Sunni tribes are beginning to turn against al-Qaida," Takeyh notes. "So the idea that an American withdrawal will lead to an al-Qaida sanctuary in northwest Iraq is belied by the evidence that the administration is itself presenting."
Takeyh also takes issue with White House predictions of a full-scale regional war. He says Iraq's neighbors have every interest in preventing war from spilling over their borders. "Instead of … intensifying their presence and exacerbating the civil war, they may actually [get] involved in a serious mediation effort," says Takeyh.
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http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1944
From The Independent Institute:
North America has been a relative safe haven from terrorism for several reasons. The United States is far away from the world’s centers of conflict. In addition, the United States does not have many militant foreign populations that could provide sanctuary and support for imported terrorists of the same ilk (unlike Britain).
According to Ohio State political scientist John Mueller, the lifetime probability that international terrorists will kill any one American is a miniscule one in 80,000—about the same as the same person being killed by a comet. Of course, the chances are even lower if you are an American living in America (instead of overseas) and not residing in New York, Washington, Chicago, or Los Angeles.
The “Islamo-fascist” scare has worked. The already massive U.S. defense budget has increased by 50% and the budget of the recently created Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has doubled. The DHS budget request for fiscal year 2008 is $46.5 billion, much of which goes to fight terrorism. Spending all that money to combat a threat that is as rare as a catastrophic comet hitting the United States makes little sense.
According to U.S. counterterrorism experts, about 90% of al Qaeda fighters in Iraq are Iraqis, not foreign fighters. These experts believe that these fighters emphasize local concerns and would have their hands full fighting the more numerous Shi’a when U.S. forces—one of their current major targets—withdraw.
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