Posted on 10/17/2005 8:49:08 AM PDT by Valin
Perhaps senior Bush administration officials thought establishing a democratic Iraq would be quick work. In an essay I wrote for the Dec. 9, 2002, issue of The Weekly Standard, I described what I thought a very difficult path to peace:
"Pity Gen. Tommy Franks or, for that matter, any American military commander tasked with overseeing a post-Saddam Baghdad. For in that amorphous, dicey phase the Pentagon calls 'war termination' ... U.S. and allied forces liberating Iraq will attempt -- more or less simultaneously -- to end combat operations, cork public passions, disarm Iraqi battalions, bury the dead, generate electricity, pump potable water, bring law out of embittering lawlessness, empty jails of political prisoners, pack jails with criminals, turn armed partisans into peaceful citizens, re-arm local cops who were once enemy infantry, shoot terrorists, thwart chiselers, carpetbaggers and black-marketeers, fix sewers, feed refugees, patch potholes and get trash trucks rolling, and accomplish all this under the lidless gaze of Peter Jennings and Al Jazeera."
Crammed with the nitty-gritty of governance and economics, the sentence ends with a caustic reminder of the importance of media interpretation.
October 2005: Peter Jennings has passed away, Al Jazeera is still with us -- though arguably less antagonistic since the Iraqi presidential election of January 2005. The terror war within Iraq continues to pit terrorist hell against democratic hope. A multitude of economic and governmental challenges linger.
But current combat in Iraq is not simply the result of slapdash postwar planning. The United States has two strategic goals that have taken years to mesh in terms of political, economic and military operations.
Goal One: engage Al-Qaida on military and political battlefields in order to destroy its claim to "divine sanction" and to "speak on behalf of Islam."
Goal Two: seed development of modern, democratic states in the politically dysfunctional Arab Muslim Middle East.
Achieving both goals defeats Al-Qaida. Goal Two is a multi-decade project. Reaching it requires sustained, courageous effort, but Iraq's January election and its constitutional process are signs of progress.
Sensational carnage and "expert pessimism" dominated the international media's January election coverage. Despite the dour predictions, Iraqi voters responded, waving ink-stained fingers -- a terror-defying demonstration of political change. Al Jazeera didn't miss it.
Military defeat in Afghanistan dealt Al-Qaida's claim of "divine sanction" a hard blow.
However, smashing Al-Qaida's claim to act on behalf of "all Muslims" is far more complicated than killing or arresting terrorists. Undermining its megalomaniacal appeal meant exposing it as the inhuman, ungodly Mass Murder Inc. it is. The optimal outcome would be to expose Al-Qaida as a threat to Muslims and detrimental to the best ideals of Islam.
When Al-Qaida's zealots blow up trains in Spain or subways in London, those are attacks of their choosing conducted on "infidel terrain." The genius of the war in Iraq is a brutal but necessary form of strategic judo: It brought the War on Terror into the heart of the Middle East and onto Arab Muslim turf. In Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's theo-fascists have been spilling Arab blood, and Al Jazeera has noticed that, too.
Arabs have also seen the Iraqi people's struggle and their emerging political alternative to despotism and feudal autocracy.
Zarqawi's murder spree has revealed fissures among Al-Qaida fanatics. Last week, the United States released a letter coalition intelligence believes Al-Qaida's second in command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, sent to Zarqawi. Zawahiri describes Iraq as "the greatest battle for Islam in our era."
But Iraq has become a political and information battle that Zawahiri realizes Al-Qaida may be losing. According to The New York Times, Zawahiri told Zarqawi to attack Americans rather than Iraqi civilians and to "refrain from the kind of gruesome beheadings and other executions that have been posted on Al-Qaida websites. Those executions have been condemned in parts of the Muslim world as violating tenets of the faith."
In February 2004, Zarqawi acknowledged a democratic Iraqi state would mean defeat for Al-Qaida in Iraq. To defeat democracy, he has pursued a strategy of relentless, nihilistic bloodbath. It's a brutal irony of war: In doing so, he is losing the war for the hearts and minds.
interesting read. who is this guy?
But...but...but... the MSM told me that there was no Al-Qaida in Iraq. </Do I really have to post a sarc tag?
Austin Bay is a Syndicated military/Strategic columnist
Writes well
October IS National Sarcastic Awareness Month.
I feel he nailed it to the wall with his observations of what is happening over there. I also wonder about his thoughts as to Saudi Arabia and Syria. I enjoy his articles as they are clear, concise, and very informative. Thanks for posting this.
He wasn't the only one. Kennith Pollack predicted all of this in "Threatening Storm" Published in Sept 2002. That guy nailed it. In just about every way.
FYI
Frankly, I doubt if ANYONE with any intelligence concerned with the Middle East outside of the MSM, the Senatorial Democrats, and the Left was surprised by the difficulties in post-Sodomite, sorry, post-Saddam Iraq. For at least the last 30 years, the problem of handling that very problem has been the excuse for leaving that sadistic nutcase in place to murder and terrorize his people and neighbors. W merely recognized that the US had to do something to attempt to resolve a problem that would only get worse. There was no choice especially after the weak image of the US that Bill 'Party-in-his -Pants' Clinton fixed in the world's mind.
Great post. We won't mention the fearless dictators, kings, and despots in the region that worry representative government might succeed.
Retired Army colonel. He has been un-retired a number of times, most recently two summers ago when he was in charge of strategic initiatives for the entire multinational force in Iraq. He was awarded the Bronze Star for that. Bay knows his stuff.
Bay is correct about this, and it becomes tedious to remind critics of the effort there that such an insurgency was predicted from day one. Nor is Bay exempt from this habit himself: Perhaps senior Bush administration officials thought establishing a democratic Iraq would be quick work. Well, they'd have been pretty wet behind the ears to believe that and I don't think any one of them has admitted it. Building a democracy there isn't simply emplacing a government, it's placing it in such a position that it can resist the inevitable attempts to overthrow it. Inasmuch as our strategic objective there was to end its government's participation in terrorism it can't possibly be sufficient to leave the new government in such a position that it is subject to subversion into the same behavior again. Neither can we effect that by brute force unless we intend a much larger-scale and more draconian occupation forever.
We don't, of course - neither the Iraqi nor the American people would stand for it. And so we bleed for their opportunity and fret that they won't take advantage of it in a way that pleases most of us. That also is inevitable.
When I read the headline on this I thought it would be about the Intelligent Design fanatics!
'But current combat in Iraq is not simply the result of slapdash postwar planning.'
"Bay is correct about this, and it becomes tedious to remind critics of the effort there that such an insurgency was predicted from day one."
--->
Since before the first day of the BASH*, I've been telling people, especially the anti-war types, that it is going to take 5-10 years before we know whether our taking Hussein out has been a successful excercise. I've not changed my mind about this, and I sincerely doubt that anyone in the administration was less informed than I.
*BASH == Battle Against Saddumb Hussein
No, I think the punditry did. REALLY sick of the way they talk out their butts then whine at the people DOING the job. I do NOT remember anyone telling us this was going to be easy. I think the Talking Heads deliberately mis represented that so they could then have a hissy fit when, war being war, things turned out to be messy and chaotic. Cannot find where this "Easy as we had been promised" nonsense started. Frankly, I cannot find any examples of where anyone in a position of power promised anyone that this was ever going to be quick or easy.
Libedratig Iraq PING.
(as I've said before) IMO The proper way of thinking about this war is "The Cold War" and not WWII, as some Freeper seemto think about it. And that means "Hearts and Minds" & "Nation Building", play a very important role in winning. And make no mistake we will win.
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