Ensuring the Future of the War on Terror
It's official. The war in Iraq was not a mere diversion from the War on Terror, as Senator Kerry repeatedly alleged during the 2004 presidential campaign. As it turns out, President Bush was right - the war in Iraq is an integral part of the overall War on Terror. Thanks to the Iraq invasion, Iraq is now the new training ground for "professionalized" terrorists. These newly-trained professional terrorists will return home to share and implement their new skills. In other words, by invading Iraq, the United States has helped to ensure the future of the War on Terror. How incredibly prescient of President Bush and company.
As reported in the Washington Post on January 14, 2005, the National Intelligence Council, the think tank of the CIA, issued its new report on long-term global trends, entitled "Mapping the Global Future." As part of its report, the NIC concluded that Al-Qaida will eventually be replaced "by the dispersion of experienced survivors of the conflict in Iraq." Currently, Iraq provides "recruitment training grounds, technical skills and language proficiency for a new class of terrorists who are 'professionalized' and for whom political violence becomes an end in itself."
According to the NIC, there has been a "revival of Muslim identity" that "will create a framework for the spread of radical Islamic ideology." The source of this revival? A "deepening solidarity among Muslims caught up in national or regional separatist struggles, such as Palestine, Chechnya,, Iraq, Kashmir, Mindanao, or southern Thailand." This solidarity "emerged in response to government repression, corruption, and ineffectiveness." As we already know, Islamists also seem to resent the presence of the American military in or near such holy places as Mecca and Najaf.
Muslims take exception to the desecration of their holy lands and the oppression and killing of fellow Muslims? Go figure.
Did anyone ever stop to think that the powers-that-be (political, religious, jihadist or otherwise) in the Middle East might view the incursion by the United States and its western ideals into the region similarly to how the United States viewed the rise of Communism in East Asia and Indochina? Might those in the Middle East be similarly concerned about a "domino effect" in the region, but instead of Communism it is American hegemony causing the dominoes to fall? Is it so inconceivable that the people of the Middle East might not cotton to the idea of the region being transformed into a springboard for American militarism or happy hunting grounds for American corporate interests?
Maybe, just maybe, the people of the Middle East, much like the people of Latin America in the 1980s, see right through the transparent hypocrisy of the United States. Maybe they can't or won't buy the feigned sincerity of the United States when it purports to "liberate" the Iraqi people from the rule of the tyrant that the United States propped up and supported for decades. Maybe they suspect that, like Manuel Noriega, Saddam Hussein simply outlived his usefulness to the United States.
Whatever their reasons, radical Islamists are drawn to Iraq like a magnet, to paraphrase NIC Chairman Robert L. Hutchins. Those jihadists who survive the Iraq conflict will, according to David B. Low, national intelligence officer for transnational threats, "go home, wherever home is, and will therefore disperse to various other countries." How comforting.
This seems a far cry from the rosy scenario President Bush painted a month before the invasion of Iraq. At that time, Bush assured the nation that "a free Iraq can be a source of hope for all the Middle East." Bush further declared, "Instead of threatening its neighbors and harboring terrorists, Iraq can be an example of progress and prosperity in a region that needs both."
Let us consider America's extreme makeover of Iraq.
Before the invasion, Iraq's government was secular and any ties it allegedly had to jihadist terrorists were tenuous at best. There is no credible evidence that Iraq ever served as a haven for terrorists, much less as a training ground.
After the invasion, it can hardly be said that Iraq is "free" - not so long as it remains under foreign military occupation and innocent civilians continue to be killed in appalling numbers. Likewise, no one can honestly say that Iraq is a source of hope to the Middle East, at least not in the sense that President Bush surely intended. Whatever hope it does offer is to jihadists, terrorists, and insurgents who see every American casualty as a victory. Iraq offers hope to those caught up in the revival and spread of radical Islamist ideology. It offers hope to everyone determined to strike a blow at what much of the world views as the gravest danger to global security - the United States.
So President Bush was slightly off in his rosy predictions about Iraq. To err is human. What's more important is just how right President Bush was about Iraq being part and parcel of the overall War on Terror. Thanks to America's invasion and occupation of Iraq, there is now a whole new source for jihadist terrorists bent on America's destruction. Thanks to Iraq, the future of the War on Terror is that much more guaranteed.
See? Kerry really was just fear-mongering.
As reported in the Washington Post on January 14, 2005, the National Intelligence Council, the think tank of the CIA, issued its new report on long-term global trends, entitled "Mapping the Global Future." As part of its report, the NIC concluded that Al-Qaida will eventually be replaced "by the dispersion of experienced survivors of the conflict in Iraq." Currently, Iraq provides "recruitment training grounds, technical skills and language proficiency for a new class of terrorists who are 'professionalized' and for whom political violence becomes an end in itself."
According to the NIC, there has been a "revival of Muslim identity" that "will create a framework for the spread of radical Islamic ideology." The source of this revival? A "deepening solidarity among Muslims caught up in national or regional separatist struggles, such as Palestine, Chechnya,, Iraq, Kashmir, Mindanao, or southern Thailand." This solidarity "emerged in response to government repression, corruption, and ineffectiveness." As we already know, Islamists also seem to resent the presence of the American military in or near such holy places as Mecca and Najaf.
Muslims take exception to the desecration of their holy lands and the oppression and killing of fellow Muslims? Go figure.
Did anyone ever stop to think that the powers-that-be (political, religious, jihadist or otherwise) in the Middle East might view the incursion by the United States and its western ideals into the region similarly to how the United States viewed the rise of Communism in East Asia and Indochina? Might those in the Middle East be similarly concerned about a "domino effect" in the region, but instead of Communism it is American hegemony causing the dominoes to fall? Is it so inconceivable that the people of the Middle East might not cotton to the idea of the region being transformed into a springboard for American militarism or happy hunting grounds for American corporate interests?
Maybe, just maybe, the people of the Middle East, much like the people of Latin America in the 1980s, see right through the transparent hypocrisy of the United States. Maybe they can't or won't buy the feigned sincerity of the United States when it purports to "liberate" the Iraqi people from the rule of the tyrant that the United States propped up and supported for decades. Maybe they suspect that, like Manuel Noriega, Saddam Hussein simply outlived his usefulness to the United States.
Whatever their reasons, radical Islamists are drawn to Iraq like a magnet, to paraphrase NIC Chairman Robert L. Hutchins. Those jihadists who survive the Iraq conflict will, according to David B. Low, national intelligence officer for transnational threats, "go home, wherever home is, and will therefore disperse to various other countries." How comforting.
This seems a far cry from the rosy scenario President Bush painted a month before the invasion of Iraq. At that time, Bush assured the nation that "a free Iraq can be a source of hope for all the Middle East." Bush further declared, "Instead of threatening its neighbors and harboring terrorists, Iraq can be an example of progress and prosperity in a region that needs both."
Let us consider America's extreme makeover of Iraq.
Before the invasion, Iraq's government was secular and any ties it allegedly had to jihadist terrorists were tenuous at best. There is no credible evidence that Iraq ever served as a haven for terrorists, much less as a training ground.
After the invasion, it can hardly be said that Iraq is "free" - not so long as it remains under foreign military occupation and innocent civilians continue to be killed in appalling numbers. Likewise, no one can honestly say that Iraq is a source of hope to the Middle East, at least not in the sense that President Bush surely intended. Whatever hope it does offer is to jihadists, terrorists, and insurgents who see every American casualty as a victory. Iraq offers hope to those caught up in the revival and spread of radical Islamist ideology. It offers hope to everyone determined to strike a blow at what much of the world views as the gravest danger to global security - the United States.
So President Bush was slightly off in his rosy predictions about Iraq. To err is human. What's more important is just how right President Bush was about Iraq being part and parcel of the overall War on Terror. Thanks to America's invasion and occupation of Iraq, there is now a whole new source for jihadist terrorists bent on America's destruction. Thanks to Iraq, the future of the War on Terror is that much more guaranteed.
See? Kerry really was just fear-mongering.
posted by Ken Sanders at
9:43 AM
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