Forget for a moment how shamelessly President George W. Bush tried
to manipulate Americans' emotions by invoking September 11 six times
during his recent prime-time sales pitch for staying the course in
Iraq. There is no need to recall the reports finding no connection
between that day's terrorist attacks and Iraq, and no call for repeating
that Iraq was not in danger of becoming a "safe haven" for
al-Qaida until after it was invaded. The president doesn't really
claim otherwise.
Instead, he says that, since the invasion, "ruthless killers"
affiliated with al-Qaida "are converging on Iraq to fight the
advance of peace and freedom." Whatever its pre-war state of
affairs, today Iraq has become a "central front" in the
global war on these extremist Islamists. Hence, the United States
has only one option"to defeat them abroad before they attack
us at home." This is the so-called "flypaper" theory
of the war on terrorism: If you can't find al-Qaida fighters where
they are hiding, attract them to an overseas locale where overwhelming
U.S. firepower will guarantee their demise. Mr. Bush made this theory
the centerpiece of his effort to convince Americans that an open-ended
military deployment in Iraq is "vital to the future security
of our country."
Forget that U.S. commanders in Iraq say "foreign fighters"
constitute a tiny minority of the insurgents they are battling. Don't
unravel the tangled logic whereby the bait luring jihadis to Iraq
is also the only means of saving Iraq from their mortars and car bombings.
Did anyone ask Iraqis if they wanted the United States to hang its
flypaper in their country?
Iraqi civilians, after all, have taken the vast majority of casualties
inflicted by the small jihadi wing of the insurgency. Iraq's interior
minister states that 12,000 civilians have been killed during the
past 18 months, most of them Shiites. They were victims of Sunni jihadis'
attempt to stoke sectarian strife. Clearly, bombings outside mosques
and in marketplaces have exacted a disproportionate civilian toll.
Still more civilian bystanders have died in attacks directed at recruits
of the nascent Iraqi police force and national guard, or at U.S. troops.
Iraqis for their part are not confused about whether the U.S. presence
is the cause or the cure for this insecurity. As far back as May 2004,
a U.S.-sponsored poll found that 59 percent of Iraqi Arabs thought
attacks on U.S. soldiers occurred because the attackers want all foreign
forces to leave, and, 53 percent thought they occurred to protect
Iraqi national dignity. Undoubtedly, the elements of the insurgency
that target civilians have ulterior motivesfrom killing Shiites
because they are "infidels" to fomenting civil waras
well as the aspiration to expel U.S. soldiers from the heartland of
classical Islamic civilization. But the fact remains that these dark
forceswhether they are of foreign or indigenous have been
unleashed by the U.S.-led invasion and occupation. U.S. withdrawal
from Iraq might not dispel these forces, but the longer the United
States stays in Iraq, the stronger they are likely to get.
It is offensive, to be sure, that the White House still thinks Americans
are so gullible as to believe that the September 11 attacks justify
the war in Iraq. But the Bush administration reveals even greater
contempt for both the public's intelligence and its sense of decency
when it insists, in effect, that the future security of Americans
requires that Iraqis mortgage their security indefinitely. There is
no reason whatsoever why invading a Muslim countryhowever many
"foreign fighters" the invading force entrapsnecessarily
reduces the risk of a radical Islamist attack on U.S. soil. Quite
the opposite may be true. Meanwhile, the inescapable corollary of
Bush's flypaper theory is: If thousands of Iraqi civilians are killed
in the crossfire, better them than us.
--
Chris Toensing is editor of Middle East Report, published
by the Middle East Research and Information Projectin Washington,
DC.
MERIP
OP-EDS
A Country at a Crossroads The Austin-American Statesman (Austin, Texas) November 9, 2007
Kamran Asdar Ali
"A
very frank discussion"— so President Bush described
his Nov. 7 telephone
conversation with Pervez Musharraf, four days after the Pakistani
general
imposed a state of emergency and dissolved the high court expected
to rule
his continued presidency unconstitutional. And frank the discussion
probably
was: In the face of spirited protest in Pakistan, and a querulous
press in
Washington, back-channel pressure succeeded in persuading Musharraf
to
promise parliamentary elections. Yet the generous U.S. aid earmarked
for
Pakistan — on top of nearly $10 billion since 2001 — is
quite evidently not
at risk.
What may be at risk is Musharraf's tenure as head
of the military government. Full
story>>
The
war debate in Washington is bogged down. Partisan rancor is one
reason why, and bipartisan desire for US hegemony in the oil-rich
Persian Gulf is
another. But many Americans are vexed by a nobler concern: that
a
“precipitous” US departure from Iraq would leave intensified
civil war,
ethnic-sectarian cleansing and massive refugee flows in its wake.
This
concern is legitimate. Unfortunately, the sad fact is that Iraq’s
civil war
and humanitarian emergency have grown steadily worse as the US
military
deployment there wears on. Full
Story>>
Should
the United States, seeking to recalibrate the balance between
security and liberty in the "war on terror," emulate
Israel in its treatment of Palestinian detainees? That is the position
that Guantanamo detainee lawyers Avi Stadler and John Chandler
of Atlanta, and some others, have advocated. That people in U.S.
custody could be held incommunicado for years without charges,
and could be prosecuted or indefinitely detained on the basis of
confessions extracted with torture is worse than a national disgrace.
It is an assault on the foundations of the rule of law. Full
Story>>
There
is an oft-told Palestinian allegory about a family who complained
their house was small and cramped. In response, the father brought
the farm
animals inside -- the goat, the sheep and the chickens all crowded
into the
house. Then, one by one, he moved the animals back outside. By
the time the
last chicken left, the family felt such relief they never complained
of the
lack of elbow room again. Full
Story>>
