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Last Updated: Jul 15, 2008 - 11:39:48 AM |
Indeed, one of President Bush’s favorite lines – telling the American
people to listen to what the enemy says and thus to know that al-Qaeda
considers Iraq the “central front” in the “war on terror” – has been
every bit as misleading as his earlier false assertions about WMD.
As we have written before at Consortiumnews.com, the real “central
front” was always the rugged area along the Pakistani-Afghan border
where al-Qaeda has reorganized and where its allies in the Taliban now
threaten U.S. and allied troops in Afghanistan.
Nine U.S. soldiers were killed in a battle inside Afghanistan on July
13, and U.S. commanders have warned of deteriorating security. Also, a
politically fragile Pakistan, with its nuclear arsenal, remains one of
the most tempting targets for Islamic extremists.
Yet, even as this threat has worsened, Bush and his team have continued
to lavish troops, equipment and other resources on the Iraq War – based
on Bush’s repeated assertion that al-Qaeda saw Iraq as the “central
front.”
Bush also offered the scary vision that Iraq was the linchpin for
al-Qaeda’s plan to create a global caliphate that would stretch from
Spain to Indonesia.
To make this case sound more plausible – given that al-Qaeda leaders
were holed up in the mountains along the Afghan-Pakistani border and
had no plausible strategy for global conquest – Bush offered his
home-spun advice about needing to listen to what the enemy says and
claiming that al-Qaeda considered Iraq the “central front.”
Sen. Barack Obama has now joined this argument, calling for reinforcing
U.S. troops in Afghanistan by dispatching two more combat brigades
(roughly 10,000 soldiers) while drawing down U.S. forces in Iraq as
part of a phased withdrawal over 16 months.
“Ending the war [in Iraq] is essential to meeting our broader strategic
goals, starting in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where the Taliban is
resurgent and al-Qaeda has a safe haven,” wrote the presumptive
Democratic presidential nominee in a New York Times op-ed.
“Iraq is not the central front in the war on terrorism, and it never
has been,” Obama wrote. [NYT, July 14, 2008]
Not Making Sense
But Bush’s argument that Iraq was the “central front” never made much
sense.
First, contrary to Bush’s folksy advice, it often isn’t a good idea to
heed the public utterances of a clever enemy, because the enemy might
be playing the old Brer Rabbit trick of urging you to do the opposite
of what he actually wants done, in effect, baiting you into a trap.
So, assuming al-Qaeda did call Iraq the “central front” (though Bush
never cites a specific quote to that effect), bin Laden might have put
that idea out as a ploy to get the United States to misdirect its
resources.
Second, the evidence from al-Qaeda’s private communications always was
that it considered its Pakistan base the key strategic necessity, not
Iraq.
For instance, as the Iraq War was heating up in 2005, a letter
attributed to al-Qaeda’s second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri asked if
the embattled al-Qaeda operatives in Iraq might be able to spare
$100,000 to relieve a cash squeeze facing the group’s top leaders in
hiding, presumably back in Pakistan.
Instead of money going from Pakistan to Iraq, the cash was flowing the
opposite way. U.S. intelligence analysts recognized that this was not
the way one would normally treat a “central front.” [See
Consortiumnews.com’s “Al-Qaeda’s Fragile Foothold.”]
Indeed, many analysts now believe the Iraq War was a huge gift from the
Bush administration to al-Qaeda. Not only did it take the pressure off
bin Laden and other leaders when they were reeling in 2002, but it
helped the terrorist organization portray itself as the defender of
Muslim lands, instead of mass murderers of the innocent.
On the military side, the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq shifted crucial
U.S. resources – such as Predator drones and Arabic-speaking
intelligence operatives – away from the hunt for bin Laden and other
leaders while simultaneously attracting thousands of young Muslims to
the cause of violent jihad.
In other words, Iraq became al-Qaeda’s “grand diversion,” not a
“central front.”
The group’s real goal in Iraq appears to have been keeping U.S. forces
bogged down in Iraq while the organization rebuilt its strength inside
Pakistan.
In another captured letter, sent to Jordanian terrorist Musab
al-Zarqawi before his death in June 2006, a top aide to bin Laden known
as “Atiyah” upbraided Zarqawi for his reckless, hasty actions inside
Iraq.
The message from Atiyah, who is believed to be a Libyan named Atiyah
Abd al-Rahman, emphasized the need for Zarqawi to operate more
deliberately in order to build political strength and drag out the U.S.
occupation.
“Prolonging the war is in our interest,” Atiyah told Zarqawi. [To view
this excerpt in a translation published by the Combating Terrorism
Center at West Point, click here. To read the entire letter, click
here. ]
So, instead of seeking a quick ouster of U.S. forces from Iraq and
using it as a base for launching a global jihad – as Bush and his
supporters claimed – al-Qaeda actually saw its strategic goals advanced
by keeping the United States tied down in Iraq.
To some U.S. analysts, al-Qaeda’s logic was obvious: “prolonging” the
Iraq War bought the group time to rebuild its infrastructure in
Pakistan, where the Islamic fundamentalist extremists have long had
sympathizers inside the Pakistani intelligence services dating back to
the CIA’s war in Afghanistan in the 1980s.
Charlie Wilson’s Blowback
That CIA war, lionized in the movie “Charlie Wilson’s War,” funneled
billions of dollars in U.S. covert money and weapons through Pakistani
intelligence to Afghan warlords and to Arab jihadists who had flocked
to Afghanistan to drive out the Soviet infidels.
One of those young jihadists was a wealthy Saudi named Osama bin Laden.
While relying on Pakistani intelligence to assist the Afghan rebels,
the Reagan administration averted its eyes from Pakistan’s clandestine
development of nuclear weapons, an apparent trade-off for Pakistan’s
help in giving the Soviets a bloody nose in Afghanistan.
[For details, see Consortiumnews.com’s “Reagan’s Bargain/Charlie
Wilson’s War” or Robert Parry’s Secrecy & Privilege.]
After the Soviets withdrew in 1989, the Afghan war dragged on. A
triumphant United States was unwilling to broker a deal with the
secular Afghan government that the Soviets had left behind.
Some hardliners in George H.W. Bush’s administration wanted these
“Soviet puppets” dragged from their offices and killed (which
eventually did happen, setting the stage for the emergence of the
Taliban in the mid-1990s).
However, in 1990, the alliance between the Islamists and the Americans
began to unravel. U.S. military bases inside Saudi Arabia, which were
established to drive Iraqi forces out of Kuwait, offended bin Laden and
alienated him from his Saudi royal family patrons.
When the U.S. bases remained after the liberation of Kuwait in 1991,
bin Laden began to view his old American allies as another band of
infidels encroaching on Muslim lands. So, bin Laden’s fellow jihadists
in Afghanistan shifted their sights onto a new enemy and developed a
new organization known as “the base,” or al-Qaeda.
For obvious reasons, the Bush administration has sought to blur this
complicated history for the American public. The reality takes some
shine off the glorious Cold War victories of Ronald Reagan and George
H.W. Bush.
Backdrop of 9/11
But this shadow struggle at the end of the Cold War was the backdrop
for the 9/11 attacks, which in turn led to George W. Bush’s invasion of
Afghanistan.
That assault drove bin Laden and his fundamentalist Taliban allies from
Afghanistan, but failed to deliver a death blow. Then, rather than
finishing the job, Bush – urged on by Sen. John McCain and other
neocons – made an abrupt detour toward Iraq. [See Consortiumnews.com’s
“Make No Mistake: McCain’s a Neocon.”]
For Bush, that decision was rife with settling old family scores and
other unspoken justifications, like Iraq’s oil fields. But Bush sold
the war to the American public as necessary because Iraq’s secular
dictator Saddam Hussein was supposedly in league with the
fundamentalist bin Laden and might give him WMDs.
When that justification proved false and a post-invasion insurgency
emerged in 2003-04 to challenge the U.S. occupation of Iraq, Bush
initially presented the resistance as an al-Qaeda offshoot operating
under bin Laden’s control.
Again, U.S. intelligence saw a different problem: Sunni and Shiite
Iraqis contesting the American presence and competing for dominance
with each other, while a violent smattering of foreign jihadists like
Zarqawi tried to insinuate themselves into the Sunni faction and spread
havoc.
Though Bush eventually acknowledged that most of Iraqi resistance was
homegrown, he still asserted that al-Qaeda planned to use Iraq as the
launching pad for its global “caliphate” from Spain to Indonesia and
thus deal a strategic defeat to the United States.
“This caliphate would be a totalitarian Islamic empire encompassing all
current and former Muslim lands, stretching from Europe to North
Africa, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia,” Bush said in a typical
reference to this claim in a Sept. 5, 2006, speech. “We know this
because al-Qaeda has told us.”
But many analysts saw Bush’s nightmarish scenario as preposterous,
given the deep divisions within the Islamic world and the hostility
that many Muslims feel toward al-Qaeda, including the rejection of its
hyper-violence and religious fundamentalism by more moderate Sunnis in
Iraq’s Anbar province.
Also, a National Intelligence Estimate representing the consensus view
of the U.S. intelligence community stated in April 2006 that “the
global jihadist movement is decentralized, lacks a coherent global
strategy, and is becoming more diffuse.” [Emphasis added.]
The NIE also concluded that the Iraq War – rather than weakening the
cause of Islamic terrorism – had become a “cause celebre” that was
“cultivating supporters for the global jihadist movement.”
Today, even as the Bush administration touts security gains in Iraq, a
reorganized al-Qaeda and the Taliban have gone on the offensive in
Afghanistan and Pakistan, where extremists were blamed for
assassinating the U.S.-backed political leader Benazir Bhutto on Dec.
27, 2007.
Some counter-terrorism experts also warn that a rebuilt al-Qaeda –
operating from secure bases in Pakistan and training a new generation
of extremists – may be poised for another spectacular strike inside the
United States.
By keeping the United States focused on Iraq, al-Qaeda and its allies
may have bought themselves time to become a more lethal threat to both
U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan and to the American homeland.
Just as the Bush administration miscalculated the dangers in its first
months in office, it may be making a similar mistake in its final
months.
Source:Ocnus.net 2008
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