"Calls to Jihad": A Prediction Fulfilled

[Chris Alger]

Another prediction: we won't be reading about "mopping up" "Baathist remnants" a month or two from now. Note that Powell said yesterday that he saw "no signs" that Saddam was active among the forces fighting the U.S. in Iraq. Note also any significant increase in the number of troops from any source appears to be out of the question.

1. Prediction (one year ago): the U.S. cannot win a war in Iraq because there will be calls to jihad throughout the world.

“An American empire in the Islamic world would put us at endless war in that most volatile of regions, and with its most violent forces: Arab nationalism and Islamic fundamentalism. Calls to jihad on America would echo in every mosque from Morocco to Malaysia.” Patrick Buchanan, USA is Not Wanted in Iraq, USA Today, November 14, 2002

2. Fact (six months ago): When the U.S. invaded Iraq, there were calls to jihad throughout the world.

“With an increasing number of calls to jihad echoing through the Arab world, from the embattled leadership of Baghdad to the pulpit of Cairo's 1,000-year-old al-Azhar Mosque, whether to go to Iraq has become a hot topic, albeit a theoretical one, for many young Muslims here .” Chicago Tribune, April 4, 2003

3. Fact (today): Calls to jihad have prevented the U.S. from winning the war in Iraq.

“Across Europe and the Middle East, young militant Muslim men are answering a call issued by Osama bin Laden and other extremists, and leaving home to join the fight against the American-led occupation in Iraq, according to senior counterterrorism officials based in six countries. The intelligence officials say that since late summer they have detected a growing stream of itinerant Muslim militants headed for Iraq. They estimate that hundreds of young men from an array of countries have now arrived in Iraq by crossing the Syrian or Iranian borders.
. . . The number of attacks is also increasing. In the last week, the average number of attacks against allied or international relief targets exceeded two dozen a day, from 12 attacks daily in July.
. . . [A]llied forces are still struggling to figure out the dimensions and composition of the opponent they now face in Iraq. ‘We are quite blind there,’ said the head of an intelligence agency in Europe. He added: ‘The Americans and Brits know very little about this enemy. They are trying to fight an enemy they cannot see.’ As a result, allied forces assume that they are fighting a loose conglomerate of like-minded opponents. Counterterrorism officials estimated that as many as 15 militant groups, some with loose ties to Al Qaeda, might now be operating in Iraq.” [i]Calls to Jihad Are Said to Lure Hundreds of Militants Into Iraq, NY Times, Nov. 1, 2003

This is no-brainer stuff. The interesting questions are (1) how many more U.S. servicemen have to die before we quit?; (2) when we finally get around to conceding failure and turn it over to the UN or quietly surrender to local anti-U.S. elements, what sort of appetites will we have whetted and what will it take to satiate them?

[Ray Zee]

bush wont quit . the person that replaces him will.
what needs to be done is set up an iraqi army and let them make their own country free. they can use the methods we cant to find and destroy the so called bad guys.
in the end we will get another country of faith that hates us and spend us into the poor house getting nothing real.
iraq is simply too large to control

[MMMMMM]

"1. Prediction (one year ago): the U.S. cannot win a war in Iraq because there will be calls to jihad throughout the world."

There were calls to jihad well before the Iraq war, and even before 9/11.

"This is no-brainer stuff. The interesting questions are (1) how many more U.S. servicemen have to die before we quit?; (2) when we finally get around to conceding failure and turn it over to the UN or quietly surrender to local anti-U.S. elements, what sort of appetites will we have whetted and what will it take to satiate them?"

If we "make them mad" they'll attack us, maybe faster than if we don't, but they'll attack us nonetheless. They are jihadists. They are religious fanatics and, practically if not psychiatrically speaking, they are insane. If we take the fight to them there is less chance they will have time or resources to take the fight to us.

So the age-old totalitarianism of Islam is finally coming face-to-face with a more powerful foe: the modern world. So jihad is becoming more mainstream now. Surprise, surprise. The conflict had to come to a head sooner or later.

I think the better question is not how many soldiers do we have to lose before we withdraw, but how many jihadists do we have to kill before their population is sufficiently decimated. They aren't going to give up and neither should we. We cannot let fanaticism and irrationality triumph, nor can we let those waging violent jihad against the West succeed. Kill the terrorists and the jihadists. As Michael Ledeen would say: Faster, please.

[MMMMMM]

We need to keep training Iraqi police and soldiers, and we need to eliminate more Baathist remnants and jihad warriors and stabilize the country more before we leave.

[ACPlayer]

As long as the US continues its policies towards the middle east there will be no end to the supply of Jihadists. The populace there wants our interference just as little as we want them attacking us.

The war is unwinnable by force, short of WakeUp's solution of nuking the middle-east from Cairo to Kabul.

[Cyrus]

Ray,

Historically I can't think of too many examples whereby an advanced democracy invaded and occupied a backward country, run by authoritarian rule, and then supported the latter in establishing an advanced democracy of its own. Britain kept India as backward as possible; France did the same to Algeria; Italy to Abyssinia (Ethiopia); a host of colonizers to China; etc.

Even when the objective of an invader, such as the US, is not outright colonization, such as was the case in the examples mentioned, it is very difficult to impose democracy from above. It's sort of a contradiction in terms because it's the people who have to take matters in their own hands and install the regime they want -- and if that's a democracy, then that democracy will be well founded.

An outside invaded and occupier, no matter how benevolent, cannot provide the essential foundation of a democracy. Which, as the term itself reveals, should be the kratos of demotes, not of oplites.

--Cyrus

[Wake up CALL]

[ QUOTE ]
As long as the US continues its policies towards the middle east there will be no end to the supply of Jihadists. The populace there wants our interference just as little as we want them attacking us.

The war is unwinnable by force, short of WakeUp's solution of nuking the middle-east from Cairo to Kabul.

[/ QUOTE ]

I never remember seriously suggesting such widespread nuclear destruction. Small surgical nuclear strikes would be much more effective. Even a backwards goatherder will understand a few mushroom clouds, heck they might even enjoy the ride to the virgin paradise we will offer.

[MMMMMM]

ACPlayer: "As long as the US continues its policies towards the middle east there will be no end to the supply of Jihadists."

I agree, ACPlayer, but there is a closely related statement which you failed to mention:

If the US were to discontinue its policies towards the middle east there will be no end to the supply of Jihadists.

[Mason Malmuth]

Hi Cyrus:

Actually there is one example that I can think of that's more similar than it first appears. It's the United States right after the Civil War.

I'll let others elaborate on all the similarities.

best wishes,
Mason

[Chris Alger]

The key term here being "right after." If we look at the larger picture of simply "after" the Civil War, perhaps best dated from the Tilden-Hayes deal of 1876, we see one of the more tragic episodes of dominent economic interests displacing and shattering the idealistic institutions forged during the war's immediate aftermath. The ultimate war of "liberation" resulted in a region of structurally impoverished, one-party white supremacist satellites where the simplest reforms proved so impossible that for nearly a century Southern officials considered subversive the very concept of civil rights (defined, say, by the language in the Civil War's civil rights amendments). America is still preoccupied with rectifying not so much slavery as the stillborn demise of progressive reconstruction.

The analogy to Iraq is apt given the rock bottom strategic and economic interests in Iraq that drive U.S. interests there. Although it isn't evident yet, it is possible that democratic competition and political freedoms might briefly flourish, even under U.S. tutelage. The end of sanctions is a godsend regardless of how profanely the U.S. claims credit. But there is no way the U.S., to the extent it can avoid it, will tolerate losing control over Iraq's immense wealth and geography to something as irrelevant as Iraqis. The rhetoric might be different, but the return of rule by truncheon seems inevitable. In terms of their ability to control their collective destiny, ordinary Iraqis now look forward to the same dismal future that befell ordinary Saudis and Iranians, indeed themselves, from the mid-1950's onward.

[Chris Alger]

"If we "make them mad" they'll attack us, maybe faster than if we don't, but they'll attack us nonetheless."

Which makes as much sense as saying that the service men and women killed in Iraq would have died anyway. That they died at the hands of people that want them to leave Iraq is merely "sooner." You are trying to make the obvious purposes of the attacks against the U.S. (and UN, Red Cross, etc.) irrelevant, something that would have happened "nonetheless."

Intolerable terrorism forces us to make war in Iraq that will trigger intolerable terrorism that forces us to make war in Iraq that will trigger more intolerable terrorism that forces us ....

[ACPlayer]

It would be a breakthrough for the US policy makers if they were to agree with you and I that our policies are contrbuting to and making it easy for groups to recruit Jihadi's. Howard Dean recognized that when he said that we needed to be more even handed in our middle east policies and got taken to task by the Zionist lobbies.

On your counter statement, well, MMM, there is no way to prove or disprove the conjecture that the recruitment of Jihadi's by the terrorist leaders will continue or not under a friendlier US policy.

There are some points to consider though:


1. Harcore anti-US terrorists are almost all from the Islamic states towards which the US has shown poor policy decisions in the past (Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Syria are some examples). There are no hardcore terrorists among the muslims of India or Africa. The terrorists of the Far East Countries (Philipines etc) have not really embraced any overt Jihad towards the US. The antiUS terrorists come from the middle east where the US policy has generally been shameful.

2. If the US policies towards the Middle East were more reaching rather than distancing the threat the US would be diminished, though the threat to Israel would grow. For example, and this is clearly conjecture, if the Bush instead of labelling Iran as a member of the Axis of Evil had made attempts to improve trade with the Mullahs of Iran, the US would be less threatened by the Iranians as mutual trade ties are built up. Of course, Israel would feel greatly threatened if the US were to go down that path, and rightly so. Our MFN trading status with China is an example of how establishing relations with China (to the horror of many when Nixon went a calling) makes China less of a threat to us.

So, it is conjecture whether or not the unlimited availability of Jihadi's would continue if the US were to follow a more constructive approach to working with these nations. Instead we support the dictatorships of the Saud Family or tolerate the abuses of the Egyptian government creating the forces that allow for the recruitment of Jihadis.

[MMMMMM]

Right Chris, it's a cycle with no escape until we either utterly decimate the terrorists' ranks or until they come into the 21st century, ideologically speaking.

We are doing a good thing in Iraq, and the jihadists and Baathists are trying to set back the clock through murder, sabotage and mayhem. That doesn't mean we should leave; that means we should kill them. Screw the terrorists; kill the terrorists; and Daisy Cutter all their training camps in the Middle East.

Also do the following: lock down Tikrit and the surrounding area, impose a shoot-on-sight curfew if necessary, and tell the populace the curfew won't be lifted until the remaining high-ranking Baath party members and Saddam are in custody. Conduct house-to-house searches they are captured. Then the country will be largely free of a focal point for the regime die-hards who wish to reclaim Iraq, the populace won't fear a return to Baathist rule, and the process of forming a representative Iraqi government can move forward.

[Chris Alger]

[ QUOTE ]
Right Chris, it's a cycle with no escape until we either utterly decimate the terrorists' ranks or until they come into the 21st century, ideologically speaking.

[/ QUOTE ]
From the polls, it would appear that the "terrorist ranks" since Bush became a neocrusader has grown to something like a billion people. Easily several hundred million in the Arab world alone, whose hatred of the U.S. is likely matched by most of the rest of the world's 1.3 billion Muslims, which is still an arbitrary limitation given the plummeting regard for the U.S. even in Europe. Nearly all of which can be traced to the U.S. role in the occupations of Palestinian territory and Iraq (See, e.g., this poll (http://chblue.com/artman/publish/article_2011.shtml) (79% to 94% of respondents in 6 Arab countries believe that further U.S. intervention in Iraq will result in "less" democracy in the authoritarian Middle East)).

This is new. Islam isn't merely continuing a tired old 1400-year jihad against the West, or even the traditional lip service given to anti-Zionism. It's reacting with unprecedented animosity and violence to the radical escalation of U.S. intervention on a scale that dwarfs the bin Lden/Wahabbist reaction to our smaller escalation after the Gulf War. The argument that this would all unfold anyway, that people who previously were suspicious and resentful of the U.S. are no more likely to be so after the U.S. invades without provocation an Arab land of 23 million is obviously insane. How many Arabs believe that the U.S. conquered Iraq to steal it's oil? 85%? 97%? Must be something close.

It is equally absurd to talk of "decimating" the "ranks" of terrorists as if they conveniently lived in the same barracks. Technically, "decimate" means to kill a tenth of a group. Yet consider how many "terrorists" the U.S. and Israel have killed since 9/11, only to find themselves looking at more terrorists than ever. It certainly makes you wonder why they haven't gotten around to bombing all those training camps; perhaps they haven't thought of it yet.

Realistically, one can't eliminate the "ranks" from which terrorists come without draining the human sea in which they swim, a fact so obvious that it's a cliche among anti-insurgency warriors. Which means permanent war everywhere until Islam, the religion you hate so well, is effectively abolished, meaning until Muslims are effectively abolished. After all, if Hamas spoke about the West as you do about Islam you'd take it as postive proof of imminent genocidal intent.

I suspect you know this and don't much care.[1] It would certainly explain your eager enorsements of war with Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iran, etc., a growing sentiment among the far-right, particularly those of Zionist bent[2] (although probably excluding the vast majority of Jews), and evidently some of the White House neocons. Hopefully, the more rational imperialist that merely want to grab the oil and dominate the Middle East a bit more will be able to check this insanity. But so far it looks like they need to partner up with the loonies, a mirror image of the welfare-for-the-rich domestic policy that draws on support from the Christian right (about whom most GOP leaders privately disdain, having little interest in teaching their children "creationist science" or psyhotherapy from Jesus).

If they can't, however, the result will be perpetual war, the complete isolation of the U.S. and anti-U.S. nuclear/chemial/biologic terrorism on a heretofore unimagined scale. Which is why the neocrusaders like you are ten or a hundred times the threat of bin Laden and his insufferable but comparatively harmless gang.
_____________________

[1] Like your recent debate with Cyrus where you denied against all evidence that Israel indiscriminately targets civilians, but then said, if it is true, it's all the more reason for the Palestinians to move elsewhere. Your persistence in blaming victims is anlogous to the no-holocaust nut that denies and denies the genocide, professing accetable horror, but when you finally marshal undeniable proof, shifts to the position that the Jews are responsible for making too little effort to relocate in time, code words for "they asked for it."

[2] See, for example, the many articles by Cal Thomas's favorite Middle East "analyst" Emanual A. Winston, whose most recent missive (http://www.freeman.org/m_online/oct03/winston.htm) asserts that "there will be no peace with Arab Muslims - be they Palestinians, Syrians, Egyptians, etc. This is a pagan culture of people who revel in death" and "people from the seed of rotten stock." Sounds just like you

[Cyrus]

Greetings, Mason.

You wrote "There is one example that I can think of that's more similar [to the effort to being democacry to Iraq] than it first appears. It's the United States right after the Civil War." (I hope I have filled the blanks accurately enough.)

I'm afraid your Civil War example is not very relevant. Beyond what Chris Alger wrote, the southern part of the United States was already about as democratic as the rest of it, before the Civil War.

As you remember, I wrote "Historically I can't think of too many examples whereby an advanced democracy invaded and occupied a backward country, run by authoritarian rule, and then supported the latter in establishing an advanced democracy of its own."

You can say what you want about the backwardness south of the Mason/Dixie but you can't really compare the divide between North/South ca. 1860 to the divide between western democracies/Iraq ca. 2001 -- or, for that matter, between any metropolis and its colonies. To wit, "Britain kept India as backward as possible; France did the same to Algeria; Italy to Abyssinia (Ethiopia); a host of colonizers to China; etc."

What I consider as most important is that, in general, true democracy cannot take roots through outside intervention and imposition. This is what's currently been attempted in Iraq (if we believe the pronouncements of the Bush gov't) but I think the boys in Washington treat this business with the cavalier attitude of opening a Burger King franchise.

It takes a lot more involvement from the natives and a lot more initiative for democracy to take hold. As an hint, I would venture that Iraqis would be closer to a democratic Iraq if they were to freely vote for Americans to get out !

Take care.

--Cyrus

[MMMMMM]

I didn't say we should decimate the ranks of those from which the terrorists come; I spoke of decimating the ranks of the terrorists themselves. Huge difference. I'm not talking of wiping out Arabs or Muslims en masse; but wiping out terrorist enclaves wherever they exist.

Also, I said "sufficiently decimate" because I am well aware of the original meaning of the word and that it has since come to a more general meaning of destroying much more (than 1/10 part); hence my use of 'sufficiently' to mean that we should destroy as much of the terrorist population as necessary. Given that a lot of them actually live in terrorist training camps where virtually no non-terrorists live, we could accomplish a large part of that goal in one day of intensive surprise sorties on those camps.

Regarding Islamic/Arab public opinion it is in many aspects ignorant, backward and warped, and we can't let it dictate our policies. Just listen to the commonplace preachings of imams in the mosques, or to Mahathir's loony backwards remarks of late which received a standing ovation from all Muslim heads of state in attendance, for evidence of this. I'm certainly not saying we should wage war on them all, but I am saying we have to do what we have to do, and we can't let their warped notions or rants stop us.

[ACPlayer]

Mahathir maybe right (http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/EJ28Aa02.html)

Concluding paragraph from above piece:

In his own paranoid fashion, Mahathir has advanced the cause of mutual understanding between the Islamic world and America. Mahathir has made clear that the Jews do, indeed, rule the world, at least in the sense that he and his compatriots understand the words "to rule". And he has made clear to Americans that the filter through which the Islamic world views America is a form of paranoia that cannot quickly be cured.

[Chris Alger]

[ QUOTE ]
I'm not talking of wiping out Arabs or Muslims en masse; but wiping out terrorist enclaves wherever they exist.

[/ QUOTE ]
Here are some "terrorist enclaves" described in the Gary Kasparov article you've cited with approval more than once: "Peace in Gaza and security in Jerusalem will not come until we bring to the end war on terrorism in Baghdad, Teheran, Damascus and other places." He also mentions Riyadh, so presumably he means every Arab urban center. After all, how were Basra and Baghdad any more "terrorist enclaves" than any other city in the Middle East?

And how many "terrorists" with U.S. targets in their sites have we killed in Iraq? To my knowledge, nobody has identified a single one. But we can be pretty confident about the Iraq Body Count estimate of around 8,000 dead civilians, with more dying daily as the "long haul" indefinitely continues.

So if Iraq is an example of the "huge difference" between decimating terrorists and wiping out Arabs or Muslims en masse, Kasparov's warning sounds more apposite: "Those who have provoked this war should remember Coventry and Pearl Harbor were followed by Dresden and Hiroshima." Indeed, something worth remembering by those who didn't provoke "this war" but remain in the line of fire by virtue of being Arabs. They're no doubt thinking about Dresden and Hiroshima now as they scramble to think of some way to convincingly deter us.

[Wake up CALL]

Chris one mans' civillian is another mans' terrorist.