New investigations by the Saudi Arabian government and an Israeli think tank -- both of which painstakingly analyzed the backgrounds and motivations of hundreds of foreigners entering Iraq to fight the United States -- have found that the vast majority of these foreign fighters are not former terrorists and became radicalized by the war itself.
The studies, which together constitute the most detailed picture available of foreign fighters, cast serious doubt on President Bush's claim that those responsible for some of the worst violence are terrorists who seized on the opportunity to make Iraq the ''central front" in a battle against the United States.
It's not like we'd ever undertake such a study to test the efficacy of our professed strategy, and even if we did, the results would be buried under fluff, if they were ever made public at all.
And it's not going to get much more bipartisan (or polarized, for that matter) than the Israelis and the Saudis. That they are in apparent agreement on the nature of this beast is a huge clue to those who are willing to listen.
''The terrorists know that the outcome [in Iraq] will leave them emboldened or defeated," Bush said in his nationally televised address on the war at Fort Bragg in North Carolina last month. ''So they are waging a campaign of murder and destruction." The US military is fighting the terrorists in Iraq, he repeated this month, ''so we do not have to face them here at home."
Okay, so they haven't struck here in the US again, but given the attack in London (note also Himself's shamefully selfish behavior in the wake of that attack, also pointed out by bigger fish than me), it would seem that the fabled theory is forming a crack of sorts.
That's if we're serious about our respect for the British commitment to Bush's mess. If so, then an attack on London, for purposes of observing the viability of this theory, may as well be an attack on Washington. Of course, this doesn't occur at all to someone like Bush, preoccupied as he is with just getting what he wants out of Blair, then tossing him like a used rubber when he's done.
Not only that, but if the London bombers were of mostly Pakistani ethnicity -- and apparently had some active Pakistani contacts and training -- then I don't suppose Bush might like to elaborate on how Iraq remains the triumphant centerpiece of this Swiss cheese theory, while Pakistan tries really really hard (really) to catch the bad guys in their backyard.
No, I don't suppose he'd have much to say about all that, not at all. Nobody can tell him nuthin' at this point. In the bizarro world of Bushthink, the London attacks probably affirm the flypaper idea. And when they hit Paris or Rome next, all he'll think is, "Hey, at least it wasn't Miami or Houston."
However, interrogations of nearly 300 Saudis captured while trying to sneak into Iraq and case studies of more than three dozen others who blew themselves up in suicide attacks show that most were heeding the calls from clerics and activists to drive infidels out of Arab land, according to a study by Saudi investigator Nawaf Obaid, a US-trained analyst who was commissioned by the Saudi government and given access to Saudi officials and intelligence.
A separate Israeli analysis of 154 foreign fighters compiled by a leading terrorism researcher found that despite the presence of some senior Al Qaeda operatives who are organizing the volunteers, ''the vast majority of [non-Iraqi] Arabs killed in Iraq have never taken part in any terrorist activity prior to their arrival in Iraq."
''Only a few were involved in past Islamic insurgencies in Afghanistan, Bosnia, or Chechnya," the Israeli study says. Out of the 154 fighters analyzed, only a handful had past associations with terrorism, including six who had fathers who fought the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, said the report, compiled by the Global Research in International Affairs Center in Herzliya, Israel.
American intelligence officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, and terrorism specialists paint a similar portrait of the suicide bombers wreaking havoc in Iraq: Prior to the Iraq war, they were not Islamic extremists seeking to attack the United States, as Al Qaeda did four years ago, but are part of a new generation of terrorists responding to calls to defend their fellow Muslims from ''crusaders" and ''infidels."
''The president is right that Iraq is a main front in the war on terrorism, but this is a front we created," said Peter Bergen, a terrorism specialist at the nonpartisan New America Foundation, a Washington think tank.
And on and on. Read the whole article. These guys fucked up, and hard, on virtually every premise they tried to sell this lemon with. The Iraqis did not greet us with candy and flowers (though some of the stupider kool-aid drinkers have posited that the Iraqis were greeting us with "flowers in their hearts", out of fear of intimidation). The war has not (and probably will not) come close to paying for itself. The new government will likely not be the promised bastion of freedom, so much as an "I can't believe it's not a democracy" with the Iranian mullahs' collective hand up its collective ass. They haven't been able to keep their story straight since day one on why we went in.
So it's no surprise to see that one of the cornerstones of their argument -- once again -- simply doesn't withstand scrutiny in practice.
However, there's one thing that I can't seem to shake, no matter how hard I try -- I understand that right now, the Islamic world is feeling very beleaguered by our presence. They feel like they are being exploited by decadent and corrupt western societies (never mind that their own societies are plenty corrupt, facilitated by our filthy pelf, and violently oppressive to boot). And now we're occupying their turf. Fair enough.
Perhaps I have been steeped in cinematic traditions of American exceptionalism for far too long, but I seriously doubt that if the tables were turned, that we'd resort to such tactics as suicide bombing -- not to mention suicide-bombing groups of our own kids getting candy. I don't know that it'd necessarily be some John Milius Red Dawn militia fantasy, but we wouldn't be strapping ourselves with Semtex and barrelling at checkpoints either -- nor would the Canadians and British be coming in to "help" with such tactics. Don't get me wrong -- we'd be engaging in some nasty things, no doubt, but suicide bombing is just not in our vocabulary, especially not on the daily scale it has been in Iraq.
I realize that this a heterodox position to take on the whole thing, and I'm not gonna pretend that I have a solution to it all, nor am I going to indulge in some ignorant "Arab mind" argument. But there is something -- culturally, religiously, something -- different at work here, and the sooner we figure out what it is, the sooner we can find solutions. And not in the "cultural imperialism" sense, not in an attempt to deem one culture inferior or superior or whatever, but just to find that cognitive disconnect.
They are frustrated, the Middle East, and they have some right to be, but they have also inculcated these hotbeds of radicalism that don't seem to hesitate to blow themselves -- and as many innocents as possible -- to smithereens. Remember, they're deliberately targeting Iraqi civilians over American soldiers now, and have been for some time. There is a reason for this, somewhere along the line, and it may be the key to beginning to set things right.
6 comments:
Yeah. Almost everything they've done has been completely wrong and maximally counterproductive. It's really something to be able to get this kind of real-time analysis so that we can ignore it for another three years.
But I would respectfully disagree that suicide bombing is "just not in our vocabulary." To my knowledge, it has not been done, and it certainly is not characteristic of Western warfare tactics. But, in cinema, suicide bombings have been carried out as heroic expressions of patriotism -- or planetism, as it were, as in Independence Day, for instance. If nothing else, the moral groundwork is certainly in place.
Suppose the American revolution had taken place in a hypothetical era of mass communications, higher martial technology, and the Brits were obviously unbeatable by conventional means.
Give me liberty or give me death, you redcoat and tory mofos.
Not precisely analogous, to be sure -- not even any religion in the mix. But I can see how depressed and hopeless young people could be drawn into a suicide attack for a 'noble' cause, especially when coaxed by elders that they respect.
Thanks for your comments, guys. Actually, I'm glad you disagree with me; that forces me to think my premise through. I'm fairly ambivalent about it to begin with, because I think we're just scratching the surface here.
But we can look at the vast majority of casualties of the recent suicide attacks, and we see that they're either Iraqi civilians or Iraqi defense forces. They're mostly not American or British soldiers, though obviously there are still some. But mostly they're killing fellow Iraqis.
I was trying to think of an American Revolution metaphor for all this earlier, per Netro, but unlike Netro, I drew a blank on it. The American Revolution was probably the first successful guerrilla campaign. They didn't just line up in formation against the redcoats; they would have been squashed. Nor were Washington's fabled ragtag militias spending their free time gunning down every civilian Tory sympathizer in sight, including children.
And they weren't suicidal about it. That's what doesn't make sense about the suicide bombers -- AK-47s are cheap and plentiful in that part of the world. It's not as if suicide is the only option for causing a death toll, and once again, they're targeting each other rather than us, which a rather poor way to send a message to an occupying enemy force.
So I dunno if the idea is to keep us there, because we wouldn't want to leave a completely stabilized country in the throes (there's that word again) of a civil war; or if they want us to just get frustrated with them blowing each other up and just say fuck it and leave.
But whatever the case, the key here is that they're not targeting soldiers much anymore (or are at least mostly unsuccessful doing it), and they're not bothering to use militia tactics (i.e., small arms engagement) to achieve a practical political end.
"That's what doesn't make sense about the suicide bombers -- AK-47s are cheap and plentiful in that part of the world. It's not as if suicide is the only option for causing a death toll, and once again, they're targeting each other rather than us, which a rather poor way to send a message to an occupying enemy force."
I don't -- I can't -- completely disagree with you about the fact that suicide bombing is nearly non-existent in our history. I only meant to point out that I don't think it's that distant of a concept anymore. That'll be the day ...
As an observer, I can only draw conclusions based on the admittedly paltry information (on this situation) that I have. As such, the civilian massacres carried out by suicide bombers have puzzled me.
I watched some of Richard Clarke's interview on Air America (on Sundance) last Wednesday in which he analyzed the make-up of the fighting. The guerrilla war, he said, is home-grown. But the suicide bombers are comprised of those elusive "foreign fighters" from Saudi Arabia, et al, with their own jihadist agendas. Makes sense. Excellent recipe for an enduring chaos.
Iraq is to terrorists as
a. flypaper is to flies
b. swamps are to mosquitoes
I guess we now have evidence to support (b). But hey, people who don't think we have enough evidence to support the theory of evolution aren't going to be impressed.
An historical nit-pick; Heywood says:
The American Revolution was probably the first successful guerrilla campaign. They didn't just line up in formation against the redcoats; they would have been squashed.
Actually most of the Revolution was in fact fought conventionally. And yes, the Continental Army got its butt kicked time and again, but they also won enough, Trenton and Saratoga, to keep in the war and make the French view us as a useful proxy against the Brits which eventually led to the conventionally successful siege of Yorktown.
There was some of what we would term guerrilla war in the south. Francis "The Swamp Fox" Marion for example operated a very successful guerrilla war in S.C., but this really was only for under two years between the fall of Charleston and the siege of Yorktown. Prior to the fall of Charleston Marion operated as conventional Lt. Col of SC militia.
Movie trivia note: Francis Marion is the primary source for the character Benjamin Martin, and Marion's antagonist Col. Banastre Tarleton is the source for Col. William Tavington in Mel Gibson's The Patriot.
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