The Flypaper Strategy

GOP USA ^ | August 28, 2003 | Austin Bay

[My back yard]

'The Flypaper Strategy' By Austin Bay August 28, 2003

It's time for the defeatist hotheads of August to take a look at American and allied success in the War on Terror.

As the fall of 2003 approaches, Iraq is two battlefields and one birthplace. On one battlefield, the venomous regime of Saddam Hussein dies a slow, painful and dangerous death. Big vipers die killing because killing is their be-all and -- to the last -- their end-all. With cash stashed in Iraq and corrupt banks throughout the world, with weapons littering Iraq's landscape, the snake still has ready poison. It's why Americans who understand the enemy continue to apply deadly, insistent military and political pressure.

The second battlefield is a large "strategic" ambush, and the enemy entering the kill zone still hasn't quite figured it out. From an American perspective that presents an opportunity, an opportunity with risks, but one with huge potential payoffs.

In Iraq, America is ambushing Al Qaeda and tag-along jihadis powered by the fantasy ideology of Islamo-fascism.

The ambush was never completely secret. In a column from Jan. 29 of this year, I wrote: "The massive American build-up around Iraq serves as a baited trap that Al Qaeda cannot ignore. Failure to react to the pending American attack would demonstrate Al Qaeda's impotence. For the sake of their own reputation (as well as any notion of divine sanction), Al Qaeda's cadres must show CNN and Al Jazeera they are still capable of dramatic endeavor. This ain't theory. Al Qaeda's leaders and fighters know it, and the rats are coming out of their alleys."

Astute observers have dubbed America's ambush the "flypaper strategy."

On 9/11, Al Qaeda chose the battlefields: New York and Washington. American leaders have decided it's better to fight terrorists "over there" than "over here." So our soldiers slug it out in the Sunni Triangle instead of Seattle. U.S. and British soldiers, and increasingly Iraqi police, are engaged in this fight. It's tough. In eight to 10 months, we'll know if it worked. Spies "walk back the cat." Jihadis entering Iraq connect back to terror cliques in rogue states. America intends to make excellent political and military use of the jihadis' "intelligence trail."

For real freedom fighters, Iraq's two battlefields are one common struggle. Occasionally reporters glimpse Al Qaeda's and Saddam's direct links, the Ansar al-Islam gang in Kurdistan being the most obvious. However, the division between secular and religious anti-American terrorists is -- as scholar Faoud Ajami said this week in The Wall Street Journal -- a "distinction without substance." Saddam's Baath loyalists and bin Laden-inspired Islamo-fascists always understood politically free people were their common foe.

Which brings us to the birthplace. Iraq is the birthplace of something every committed human rights advocate should praise -- a free land escaping murderous tyranny. Baathists and Islamo-fascists are both old-time autocrats, the control freaks of the past trying to kill the future in its crib.

It's an exhausting and bloody birth, and understandably, given the legacy of murder and theft. Yet Iraq is on a time-line for an elected government. Even The New York Times, the daily voice of American quagmire and catastrophe, admitted Iraqis support the U.S. effort in extraordinary numbers: "Four months into the occupation, the rebellion against American forces, though fierce, is still largely limited to the Arab Sunni Muslim population and its foreign supporters and confined to a relatively limited geographic area."

Iraq's success has frightened autocrats throughout the Middle East. Autocrats in Taliban caves, in Iran, in Syria, fear Iraqi democracy. Coalition success in Iraq is forcing the House of Saud to choose between democratic evolution and fatal revolution.

Defeatist hotheads who natter about "root causes of terror" must understand the taproot of terror is tyranny. Theft and brutality by local dictators are the leading causes of Third World poverty. UC-Berkeley faculty resolutions don't stop gangsters. Cutting the taproot usually requires the explicit presence and sometimes the precious lives of Western soldiers.

August has been a hot and horrid month in Baghdad. Fascist and Islamo-fascist thugs are testing the collective will of America, the Iraqi people, Britain, and their coalition allies.

There will be more wretched months. It's war.

It's also a war we are winning.

[My back yard]

Defeatist hotheads who natter about "root causes of terror" must understand the taproot of terror is tyranny.

[My back yard]

Should have put that in quotes.

But worthy of repeating.

"Defeatist hotheads who natter about "root causes of terror" must understand the taproot of terror is tyranny."

[My back yard]

Here read this.

[My back yard]

I enjoyed this article. Thought you would too.

[My back yard]

I enjoyed this article. Thought you would too.

[My back yard]

God Bless those soldiers who are over there "Cutting the taproot".

[kinghorse]

I have argued that the fly paper strategy is a sound one. I don't think it was the US leadership's intention to get embroiled in a big stinking mess in order to attract all the fanatics into a nice neat kill box. Makes for nice print but it stretches credulity to think after all the other reasons for invading, this one would stick (bad pun).

[kinghorse]

Contradictory set of sentences. What I meant to say is, yeah, I guess if they don't want democracy we can get something out of this by fighting the enemy on their turf. Just don't think it was the original plan (but that's not to say it wasn't and we just didn't get to listen in on the meeting).

[HairOfTheDog]

I do think I will like it..... Thanks - gonna read now!

[FLAUSA]

With Bush there always seems to be a turn of events that end up being favorable to him. I used to think Bush was a very lucky man but I'm starting to think that he makes his own luck. This "flypaper strategy" may be true and I'd rather have the fight in Iraq than in NYC. Maybe we can call it the "roach motel" strategy. Terrorists check in but they don't check out.

[BrokenArrow]

If the “Fly Paper” as an early plan or a last minute adjustment it still beats having street warfare in downtown America.
We need to keep the streets open for the local terrorist. That way they can protest and close down business and slow progress (That was sarcasm).
Buy the way what happened to our flag and our spirit. Seems most have retired their flags back to the closet. Supply drives for the soldiers are over yet the fight continues. We hit the snooze button and have gone back to bed. Wonder what the next alarm will bring?

[ArrogantBustard]

I predict that this thread will become home to morons who think fighting in NYC is preferable to fighting in Mosul.

[TheCause]

"Taproot"......

Looks like we dropped a butt load of Round-Up on their sorry asses!

[My back yard]

My very liberal, however adorable, mother-in-law made the comment after we went into Iraq - 'what if they don't want democracy?' I asked her if she could rationally 'cough' put that same question to any other time of liberating an oppressed people, like the slaves in this country? Has there ever in history been a free people who voted for an autocracy, plutocracy, hoplarchy or a monarchy? far as I know the closest we've come is the Clintons..the terrible paedocracy of the late twentieth century.

[My back yard]

Code name 'Operation Roundup'. Works for me.

[My back yard]

Buy the way what happened to our flag and our spirit.

As in 'where is the horn that was blowing?'

[Wneighbor]

This, is a good article. Thank you.

[Wneighbor]

MBY, I'm sendin' it to my s-i-l. I think he'll like this article. Should give him and his guys a bit of a lift to read sumthin' like this.

[WaterDragon]

I love this article. It's just about the best I've seen on the subject. I'll make sure other people get this link. And thanks for pinging me to it!

[WaterDragon]

Paedocracy! Paedocrats!

Great description of the liberal/Lefties'!