The recent release of a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) asserting that al-Qaeda has regrouped in Pakistan has resulted in a significant amount of debate about the Global War on Terror and the efforts the United States is undertaking in its prosecution of that war. While congressmen, media pundits, military analysts and others weigh-in with their respective opinions, it is important to accurately define al-Qaeda and remind Americans of the goals sought by the group's members.
The al-Qaeda that most people think of is the al-Qaeda of Usama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, the group that hijacked four American airliners and crashed three of them into the World Trade Center buildings and the Pentagon. But this is not the al-Qaeda that is most dangerous to the United States today. Bin Laden, if he is even alive at this point, is incapable of posing a direct threat to the American homeland because the offensive nature of the war on terror has kept him and Zawahiri on the run and looking over their shoulders, while many of al-Qaeda's top lieutenants have been either killed or captured. The original al-Qaeda that declared war on the United States, many years before Americans even acknowledged the threat posed by the group, is in disarray and unable at the moment to execute an attack equal in scale or grandeur to the attacks of September 11, 2001. While it would indeed be gratifying to see bin Laden brought to justice for his crimes, his death or capture would do little to help the United States in its fight against terrorism.
The real threat is instead posed by the al-Qaeda that has taken shape since the attacks that prompted our incursions into Afghanistan and Iraq. The new al-Qaeda consists of a multitude of terrorist organizations, some new and some old, which have either been inspired by bin Laden and Zawahiri or have publicly declared their allegiance to the original terrorist group. It is through these groups, which are operating in all corners of the globe, that the ideology of the old al-Qaeda continues to live. To focus on any one organization, whether it be bin Laden's original "Base," Abu Musab al-Zarqawis's al-Qaeda in Iraq, the Pakistani elements mentioned in the NIE, or al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb is to miss the fundamental reality that we are fighting a radical ideology hell bent on destroying our way of life in its pursuit of Islamic domination of the world.
In a February 1998 "Jihad against Jews and Crusaders" statement, bin Laden, Zawahiri, and other leaders of the original al-Qaeda called on Muslims "...to kill the Americans and their allies-civilian and military..." to force an American withdrawal from the Middle East. In 2002, bin Laden wrote a letter to the American people in which he instructed them to embrace Islam and get out of the Middle East's holy lands. Then in 2005, coalition forces in Iraq captured a letter purported to be from Zawahiri to al-Qaeda in Iraq leader Zarqawi that explained al-Qaeda's four stages of jihad: 1) expel the Americans from Iraq; 2) establish an Islamic emirate in Iraq and develop it into a caliphate; 3) extend the jihad to Iraq's secular neighbors; and 4) the inevitable battle with Israel. With the domination of the Middle East complete, radical elements would be in a much stronger position from which to spread their virulent form of Islam.
It is this fanatical ideology, promulgated by the original al-Qaeda, that has been embraced by violent groups the world over. Across the globe, elements inspired by bin Laden's al-Qaeda have taken up his cause. It is against these elements, and their strict adherence to a radical form of Islam, that we are now fighting, and it is the ideology that binds the al-Qaedas, new and old, together. Our enemies believe that they are executing God's will, and that those who oppose them also oppose God. Negotiations and dialogue are meaningless because any sort of compromise or understanding would be in conflict with what they believe to be the wishes of God. They cannot be reasoned with; they can only be killed.
Many in this country are demanding that we withdraw our troops from Iraq. Some have suggested that we should put our focus back on Afghanistan and those who attacked us on 9/11. Both of these arguments demonstrate a genuine lack of understanding not only about our enemy, but about the threats we face.
An Iraq pullout would signify the accomplishment of al-Qaeda's first stage in the quest for global domination, the expulsion of the Americans from the Land of the Two Rivers. New al-Qaeda groups on every continent would be emboldened by the victory, and would likely attempt to seize the opportunity to step up efforts in their particular areas of operation. At least part of Iraq would, in all likelihood, become a safe haven for al-Qaeda elements to move to stage two, the establishment of an Islamic emirate from which the extension of jihad could be launched, pushing al-Qaeda's plan to its third stage. Similarly, a focus on bin Laden and Afghanistan ignores the devolution of al-Qaeda from its original form into a decentralized, cellular organization that operates largely independently of the core leadership. While we focused our attention on the remnants of al-Qaeda and Taliban elements in Afghanistan, countries like Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia would be fighting for their very survival.
The debate over Iraq and the war on terror can easily become inflamed by personal passions. Amid all the partisan rhetoric emanating from both sides of the political aisle, though, it is important to remember that what we are fighting is not Islam, or bin Laden, or the al-Qaeda that attacked us on 9/11, but a radical ideology that seeks nothing less than global domination.
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Comments: 32
Great, thought-provoking article. Too bad that many on here will use these little square boxes to go totally off-message and off into the Wild Left. Watch and see.
You got that right. All one has to do is read the PNAC agenda, and you've got your greatest threat and most dangerous enemy of the nation squarely in sight.
The thing that moves me away from support of this is that we are losing our own country right now. We have no industrial base anymore. We talk about our oil deficit, but most of the money we send overseas now to for industrial goods that we no longer make.
We have the lessening of the American worker, the export of jobs and corporations, the media consolidation under 6 companies that have close links to the defense industry. We have a health cares crisis.
We have a government that has lied to us about Iraq. Has lied to us about Global Warming/Climate Change, has lied to us about Outsourcing by censoring its own expert's opinions. They have fired Generals who have turned out to be right in favor of incompetents like Rumsfeld or Gonzalez who still hangs on to his job.
I agree that Islam is a threat, but I think the largest boost and reason for that threat has been he Bush administrations own incompetent actions. Not only just incompetance concerning the war, but the push on the whole infrastrcture of the country to re-engineer American society is a not-voted on, undiscussed, secretive opaque way.
Goals such as the destruction of Social Security, the scrambling of our educational system, the use of every possible loophole of strategy to get his people into power all throughout the government to push a rich Bush elite plan nebulously called "The Ownership Society". I can go one for a long time, just my opinion. Bush and his ilk want to own American workers by devaluing their labor and their opportunities until they are equivalent to passive powerless 3rd world workers.
The problem is that we will not have a country to defend if we keep pretending to fight this war. It is a good idea in theory, and I think we will surely end up fighting and beating Islamo-Nazism into the ground, where it needs to be buried, but what is going on now is counter-productive.
we could have used him big time.
Say we leave, the warring factions will then unite against their secular neighbors. It is extremely difficult to fathom that.
They are in disarray, as long as they are at each others throats, they won't be able to spread their agenda.
One thing for sure, nobody knows the future if we leave. But everyone knows our current course is not working except in making Al Qaeda stronger.
Iraq on the other hand has a tremendous strategic value, i.e., the majority of the worlds oil reserves is in the Middle East, al Qaeda etc. We will be in Iraq at least another 20 years to 50 years.
The problem with this is that the real price of oil is an unknown. The price we see today is a political and marketing price due to false shortages and uncertainty, and the industry and Arabs must love it. The problem if we start to wean off it is that I think the price will collapse, and then we are stuck with a very very expensive and perhaps dangerous solar, nuclear, wind, biomass alternative energy system that we have built for political reasons but which is so expensive that remaining on oil based energy gives the rest of the world a competitive advantage.
I think this is the "poltical" value we see in convincing countries of the threat of global warming ... it also makes me wonder about global warming, it is just too perfect that it comes along right now. What if we do all these changes and nothing happens to decrease the Earth's temperative. I can just hear all those scientists saying how it would be even worse if we had done nothing.
Personally I look at the social and political trends in the US and I think it is way more important to fix the US than it is to remain in Iraq. However if we leave Iraq the Arabs will be emboldened to use W's term to push us out of the whole Middle East, and whatever they say this is about, I think it is about Arab nationalism and holding the world ransom with oil.
So the price of holding this oil world together it seems is a certain amount of military deaths, and out-spending the rest of the world on military hardware ... not to mention the medical for wounded soldiers. I think the best alternative is to get out. The problem is that China will then suck up lots of cheap oil. We have to have a way to handle that change, we need a plan for the transition ... it is a very dangerous proposition if we do not ... so we end up staying in Iraq.
Bruce, you make excellent points, however a transition to switch our fossil fuel economy to alternatives may take 10 to 15 years. During the Carter administration we were seeking alternative fuels however the price of oil bottomed out in the 80's. Since we are a market driven economy we resumed consumption of cheap oil and abandoned our transition plan.
"The problem is that China will then suck up lots of cheap oil."
Maybe, however, many people believe if we leave Iraq the chaos would spread to other parts of Middle East. The house of Saud is a government built on a deck of cards. It would not take much for it to fall. Chaos could not only spread to Saudi Arabia but to Iran. Oil production in the Middle East would be in Jeopardy. Not only would China have not have access but neither would the We. The only oil supplier left would be the criminal Russian government which is a scary proposition. Given these circumstances the price of oil would increase to more than $300 a barrel. Our fossil fuel driven economy would collapse into a depression. Again, this is why we may be in Iraq for many years to come. Even if someone such as Edwards who talks about withdrawal won the election tomorrow he would probably break his promise once he is in office.
Don't most, if not all, of the resolutions that Congress brings up, unless drafted by Kucinich or Pelosi, say that we should get out of Iraq by such-and-such date unless the President and military really wanna stay? Not to mention that none of the proposals, that I know of, deal with the contractors. Everyone thinks we have 160,000 men in Iraq. We have nearly double that, possibly triple (since there is no accounting of contractors).
Nearly all of the candidates, GOP or Dem, are for the status quo. They don't want radical change in either direction, thus even the Dems would be forced to stay in Iraq with sizable US military forces along with the contractors.
They have had the sense to mine with dirty bombs their whole oil infrastructure to prevent a neighbor or agressor from profiting by their turnover, from inside or out.
Not only that but it is reported until recently that they have the US dangling like a puppet to get their business. American corporations have fired, laid off, not hired or whatever Jews because of Saudi Influence ... so much for our own sovereignty.
Not only that but it is s crime in the US for the Commerce Department to document exactly how much of America is owned by the Saudis. There used to regulatory limits on the percentage of strategic companies that Saudis could own, but due to lobbying efforts on the part of people like Kissinger, Bush, etc those limits have been waived many times, and legislation was passed to hide Saudi investment from American's eyes.
So much for Saudi Arabia, they have a very intelligent strategic "aggressive" foreign policy, not to mention they are taking over most of the Islamic world with their Wahibism strategy and funding mosques in Islamic countries as well as the West.
Iran ... a slightly different story, but they are also not much danger of oveturning, especially since out own aggressiveness towards them binds them society in defensive strategy. Iran is not doing well economically. That does not mean they are going to collapse.
So, I'm just speculating about one scenario, and that is if the US find alternative energy systems, they are likely to be rendered useless by a drop in the price of oil.
If the Middle East stopped sending out oil, I doubt there would any oil for the consumer market at all, anywhere, the complete depression you talk abut would show just how foolish we have been in the design and engineering of our whole infrastructure, as the food industry collapsed, transportation ... it would literally be the end of the world and precipitate immediate all out war I think which still would not solve the problem for a long time.
For our business people and leaders to steer us into such a vulnerable position shows that it is not thinking or strategy that we are chasing, it is money that is chasing the decisionmakers.
For instance how many people know that China now manufactures more high tech than the US does? Where is our manufacturing infrastructure. It is such a drag when you can make a few million dollars to be told by the government, don't go to China and build a plant, stay here for security reasons.
Do our patriotic capitalistic government hating geniuses like dick cheney think about that? Cheney's own old company is now headquartered in Dubai of all places, so they do not have to pay taxes of be regulated by the US that allowed them to come into existense and thrive.
Does it make you want to puke?
Just this morning, there was a major report of Sunni militias banding together with U.S. forces to FIGHT al Qaeda and toss them out of Amriya. Even the Sunnis in Iraq are tired of these guys.
al Qaeda is NOT the issue in Iraq. It's a civil war between Shia and Sunni, being manipulated (to varying degrees) by Saudi Arabia, Iran and others.
Any attemtpt to simplify this back to "good vs. evil" and "us vs. al Qaeda" is disingenuous at best and just plain mendacity (to continue the assanine stay-the-course propaganda of the Dubya administration) at worst.
Both sides (Sunni and Shia) are fatigued with al Qaeda. The Iraqis have the resources to deal with al Qaeda. It's dealing with each other that seems to be hampering the creation of the shining beacon of democracy that will transform the Middle East, point the way for all Great-Satan-hating muslims to change their ways and end radical Islam as we know it.
It should be noted that "Zargawi," if he was the original Jordanian by that name and not an agent for who-knows, was said to come to Iraq in 2002 and it was never claimed he had any support from "al-Qaeda" and bin Laden in Afghanistan/Pakistan until 2004.
The vast majority of the thousands of Muslims who have come to Iraq to fight Americans since before the invasion and continue to do so want us out of the region: they have no interest in attacking America . Bush, insulting the intelligence of his audiences, calls "al-Qaeda," in Iraq a threat; 90 times he mentioned "al-Qaeda" in his most recent speech to a military audience !
Less than 5% of those who have come to Iraq to fight the Americans have sympathy with any "al-Qaeda," bin Laden philosophy of fighting the "far enemy," that is America outside Muslim lands.
As long as our bases and the elephantine Embassy in Baghdad exist , they will be considered symbols of America's intention to dominate the region. They will attract Arabs from every country to come to Iraq to oppose American occupation and invasion.
> fight the Americans have sympathy with any
> "al-Qaeda," bin Laden philosophy of fighting the
> "far enemy," that is America outside Muslim lands.
Clarke, I hear an emphasis in your posts that you
make a lot of the information (that comes from
somewhere) seeming to indicate that we are not
theatened here in our "homeland" by islamic
facism.
I wonder why you are prepared to put any more
faith in this type of information that a right-winger
is putting their "faith" in George Bush and what they
media tells us?
I think Islamic Fascism is an "existential" threat to the
west, on any time scale, and virtually everything we
(West) do we need to consider the effect of a huge
block of humanity locked into an intolerant expansive
culture that is intolerant of us, and inimical to the West.
If we're so damn concerned with what al Qaeda is going to do to us, why don't we go into Pakistan and bomb the hell out of the countryside where they flourish?
If we're so damn concerned with what al Qaeda is going to do to us, why didn't we finish the job in the first place, get bin Laden and the rest of their leadership and secure Afghanistan.
Yeah, we're real concerned about al Qaeda... BTW, Dubya now wants to give the Saudis a multi-billion dollar arms package... yes, those same Saudis that gave us the majority of the 9/11 hijackers, and who, as our own government reports, are responsible for more than 50% of all "foreign insurgents" being held by American forces in Iraq prisons.
Yeah, we gotta deal with al Qaeda problem alright.
I agree that the Bush administration's description is vague, and probably intentionally so because the average person can relate--al-Qaeda, threat, must be dealt with. A distinction I made in the article was that al-Qaeda prime (bin Laden, Zawahiri, etc.) has inspired groups who claim allegiance to them and are inspired by them. However, direct ties are tenuous at best.
The problem, though, is one of capability. We do not have the resources to militarily attack every terror group in the world. That being said, I should also point out that the war on terror is very much like the war on drugs. It can't ever be won completely. Your attempt to denigrate the effort against al-Qaeda is weak and reflects an amazing misunderstanding about the course of events since 9/11.
Oh, by the way, was there some tie between the 9/11 hijackers and the Saudi government that no one else seems to know about? How can you attempt to make that connection? That's like saying because Tim McVeigh was American that the Clinton administration was complicit in the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building.
Are you going to suggest that the Saudi government is actively trying to stop and stamp out radical mosques who support terror (al la al Qaeda)? I know from previous posts you're not that naive. The Saudi government has done nothing to stop extremists in their country. In fact, as you well know, they have stated publicly that they will do what's necessary to defend Sunni interests in Iraq.
What was it Dubya said as the "war on terror" began? Something about harboring terrorists makes you just as guilty. Fifty percent of all "foreign insurgents" jailed today in Iraq are Saudis... fifty percent. They are going into Iraq and killing American soldiers. What is the Saudi government doing about it?
Despite what the President said, he is also smart enough to know that nothing is as black and white as he laid it out to be. That speech was designed to get people's attention, but the enforcement of such statements is a significant task.
The point is that in a pre-9/11 world, the Saudi government never dealt with radical Islamic mosques and clerics espousing the wonders of jihad. Perhaps, then, it's no coincidence that most of the hijackers were Saudis. In a post 9/11 world, their approach doesn't seem to be any different. Their citizens are given directions and support from radical clerics and are going to Iraq to support the Sunni insurgency. When they arrive, they kill people. The Saudi government isn't lifiting a finger to stop it. Thus, they are complicit. Now, Dubya would like to provide them with billions in armaments... even as their citizens head to Iraq in suppport of the Sunni insurgency, and the governement has publicly stated they will do whatever is necessary to protect Sunni rights in Iraq. Can you at least allow me the irony in all of this?
As to whether Dubya is "smart enough to know that nothing is black and white," our dear president's IQ notwithstanding, I get the impression he's pretty much a "black and white" kinda guy.
Are they complicit? Yes. So are many other governments. But as I said, enforcing rhetoric is much more difficult than speaking it. And, this administration, as has been the case with every U.S. administration, often supplies arms, support, materiel, money, etc. to parties we do not agree with. Much of the time it is aimed at maintaining a regional balance, for example, the Israelis, the Jordanians, the Egyptians, etc. receive U.S. support and aid. We are a staunch ally of Israel, but we arm countries that have launched all-out invasion attempts against her and only maintain a peace because they cannot win.
This is not something new that just popped up with this administration. The irony you mention can be applied to many presidents and many members of congress, of both political parties.
Including American citizens (9/11) and soldiers. Dubya's response to Saudis killing our our citizens and our soldiers: "Thanks for killing us, here's $20 billion worth of arms. Have fun with that."
To use Israel as an example, again, Prime Minister Olmert just decided to arm Fatah to strengthen Abbas. No one can say with a straight face that Fatah is a friend of Israel, or that Fatah's hands are bloodless. But the leader of Israel is making decisions, as he was elected to do.
This is from the text of the testimony offered by former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on February 1, 2007 :
http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474976901034
"...If the United States continues to be bogged down in a protracted bloody involvement in Iraq, the final destination on this downhill track is likely to be a head-on conflict with Iran and with much of the world of Islam at large. A plausible scenario for a military collision with Iran involves Iraqi failure to meet the benchmarks; followed by accusations of Iranian responsibility for the failure; then by some provocation in Iraq or a terrorist act in the U.S. blamed on Iran; culminating in a "defensive" U.S. military action against Iran that plunges a lonely America into a spreading and deepening quagmire eventually ranging across Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.
A mythical historical narrative to justify the case for such a protracted and potentially expanding war is already being articulated. Initially justified by false claims about WMD's in Iraq, the war is now being redefined as the "decisive ideological struggle" of our time, reminiscent of the earlier collisions with Nazism and Stalinism. In that context, Islamist extremism and al Qaeda are presented as the equivalents of the threat posed by Nazi Germany and then Soviet Russia, and 9/11 as the equivalent of the Pearl Harbor attack which precipitated America's involvement in World War II.
This simplistic and demagogic narrative overlooks the fact that Nazism was based on the military power of the industrially most advanced European state; and that Stalinism was able to mobilize not only the resources of the victorious and militarily powerful Soviet Union but also had worldwide appeal through its Marxist doctrine. In contrast, most Muslims are not embracing Islamic fundamentalism; al Qaeda is an isolated fundamentalist Islamist aberration; most Iraqis are engaged in strife because the American occupation of Iraq destroyed the Iraqi state; while Iran -- though gaining in regional influence -- is itself politically divided, economically and militarily weak. To argue that America is already at war in the region with a wider Islamic threat, of which Iran is the epicenter, is to promote a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Deplorably, the Administration's foreign policy in the Middle East region has lately relied almost entirely on such sloganeering. Vague and inflammatory talk about "a new strategic context" which is based on "clarity" and which prompts "the birth pangs of a new Middle East" is breeding intensifying anti-Americanism and is increasing the danger of a long-term collision between the United States and the Islamic world. Those in charge of U.S. diplomacy have also adopted a posture of moralistic self-ostracism toward Iran strongly reminiscent of John Foster Dulles's attitude of the early 1950's toward Chinese Communist leaders (resulting among other things in the well-known episode of the refused handshake). It took some two decades and a half before another Republican president was finally able to undo that legacy.
One should note here also that practically no country in the world shares the Manichean delusions that the Administration so passionately articulates. The result is growing political isolation of, and pervasive popular antagonism toward the U.S. global posture.
It is obvious by now that the American national interest calls for a significant change of direction. There is in fact a dominant consensus in favor of a change: American public opinion now holds that the war was a mistake; that it should not be escalated, that a regional political process should be explored; and that an Israeli-Palestinian accommodation is an essential element of the needed policy alteration and should be actively pursued."
In subsequent comments, as at the press conference after his testimony , ZB has been more explicit on several points. He noted that only five people in the administration had been making decisions, with little discussion with others.
And this notion is wrong, ......... why ?
There are only two reasons the United States has any interest in the Middle East, Israel and Oil
I say, american ingenuity could rid ourselves of the need for Oil, especially since the USA doesn't import much Oil from the Middle East. As for Israel, isn't it about time we take the tit out of their mouth and allow them to fend for themselves ?