Olivier Roy points out that people claiming that if we leave Iraq it'll somehow be taken over by al-Qaeda don't know what they're talking about. But, hey, don't listen to him -- he's done actual scholarly research that's relevant to the issue and that kind of thing has no place in American political debate.
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No Qaeda Takeover
14 Mar 2008 04:28 pm
Comments (17)
Matthew, can someone please take a look at post from a few days ago that said the Pentagon report showed "no links" between Saddam and al Qaeda and then the report came out showing the opposite?
Here is one link to start at
http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2008/03/only_connected.asp
The report shows Saddam's Iraq supported at least 6 al Qaeda affiliated groups all over the world, ran car bomb factories, IED factories, had a branch of the government to recruit foreign suicide bombers and had car bombs, missile launchers, etc. in their foreign embassies. It's really worth an honest look and ABC and the other networks aren't going to do that because they are too invested in Bush hatred to tell the truth.
I think your readers deserve some kind of update/amendment/apology because the initial McClatchy version of the story was from a leaker who didn't accurately represent the report. I humbly ask that you read the whole report. It's loaded with evidence of Saddam being up to his eyeballs in terrorism, including Islamic terrorism.
I humbly ask that you read the whole report. It's loaded with evidence of Saddam being up to his eyeballs in terrorism, including Islamic terrorism.
See, no one doubted he was. It's just that his terrorism focused mostly on regime enemies (individuals and local groups) and the Palestinians.
As for "links" that could be semantic. They did not have an operational relationship or work together. And "al-Qaeda affiliated groups" is a bit of an abstraction.
The Reagan administration was up to its eyeballs in support for al Qaeda sympathizers such as Osama bin Laden and other terrorists. Therefore the only possible policy response is that the Reagan administration must be invaded, or at least bombed.
I think your readers deserve some kind of update/amendment/apology because the initial McClatchy version of the story was from a leaker who didn't accurately represent the report.
Good luck with that.
Let's face it, as between a McClatchy story on the report and what the report actually says, the lefty blogosphere is going with McClatchy, every time.
Al,
Examples? Cite some text. Elucidate.
The report about the report actually said there were no "operative links" between Saddam's Iraq and Al Qa'ida. That terrorist organizations themselves have connections to each other is not forgotten.
But, yes, again, if having been connected to Gulbuddin Hekmatyar is a category which stipulates that the nation should be subject to invasion & occupation, there should be some serious investigation of Carter & Reagan administration officials.
I say we need to bomb Kevin Bacon.
Of course, there IS also the little fact that the Bush Administration -- after McClatchy put out the word that the report would weaken its insistence on a Iraq-Al Qaeda connection -- hastily decided to minimize the report's distribution. Naturally they would have done that if (as Al insists) the report actually supports their case.
While I agree with Roy's take in general, I take a bit of an issue with the following:
However, in Bosnia, Chechnya, Afghanistan and now Iraq, the Islamist internationalist groups have been unsuccessful in diverting local and national conflicts, playing only the role of auxiliariesThe fact is in Chechnya, Jihadist foreign fighters have managed to take what was once a fight for independence from Russia and transform it into a war for the sake of Jihad. There's no greater examples of this than the Dagestan incursion by Chechen fighters after their victory over the Russians in the first war, or the current state of affairs where Doku Umarov has declared the so-called Caucasus Emirate, which basically seeks to unite all the Caucasus territories under the banner of radical Islam.
This was not what Chechen leaders had in mind back in the early 90's when they were pushing for independence. It is a result of foreign jihadists spreading their influence and beliefs among the rank and file of the Chechen resistance.
Ah yes, Mr. Roy, by all means cite someone who though Islamic fundamentalism was a fading force
back in the 1990s
I am not talking about links to "just" Hekmaytar. I am talking about the documented links to Abu Sayyaf, terrorists in Somalia being assisted and told to hunt and kill Americans, support for Pakistani Islamists, support for Egyptian Islamic Jihad which is Zawahiri's group and supplied many of the 9-11 hijackers, a branch of government whose job was to recruit foreign suicide bombers, support for Ansar al Islam - which is Zarqawi's group, training Sudanese jihadis (also UBL affiliates), factories for building carbombs and ied's, foreign embassies being filled with missile launchers, silencer rifles, carbombs and ieds and poisions, and on and on and on.
If this is something just to blow off to you guys than just say so but don't keep saying that the repot says something else.
There are two arguments here. One is over what the report actually says and one over whether or not any of that means the invasion was necessary. Those who oppose the war like to throw EVERYTHING that might support the invasion out the window because it gets in the way of their opinion. Can't we jsut stick to what's in the report?
Narciso
If i remember rightly Roy actually argued that what he described as "political Islam" was a fading force during the 1990's, because of its failure to actually overthrow any governments since the Iranian Revolution (with the exception of the Islamist coup in the Sudan).
He argued that the result would be a splintering of the movement into two main streams, one which he called "neo-fundamentalism", which was less engaged with mundane politcal concerns, and even more extreme, voilent, and engaged in global apocolyptic rhetoric and conspiracy theories. The other stream would be a more mild, comparatively moderate brand of Islamism. The 20th century has seen the increasing rise Roy's "neofundamentalists", Al Qaeda and many like-minded groups, as well as more mild forms of Islamism, such as the Justice and Development Party now in power in Turkey (and a similar group in Morroco, plus the Wasit Party in Egypt).
So Roy has a pretty good idea what he is talking about.
Mark, the thing is that there just isn't anything important in that report. Iraq's support of AQ is minimal, and influence over it damn near zero. Say there's no Iraqi support at all; does anything really change?
Mark E: What a completely inane pseudo argument. There are not quite so many people arguing that Saddam's Iraq had no links to terrorist, subversive, or violent forces, or that it wouldn't be better for nearly everyone that he be gone.
The question of terrorist links have nothing to do with establishing the general sense that Saddam Hussein was a dangerous and disreputable figure willing to consort with other such forces; the Al Qa'ida link allegations have nothing to do with the actual capacities of Al Qa'ida, but rather are asserted as a propagandistic measure taken by an administration which wanted war.
Again, establishing that governments throughout the Middle East have had numerous contacts with terrorist or subversive non-state forces is not difficult to do.
The question people argue about was whether the correct thing to do given a number of commonly held assumptions was to invade & occupy Iraq. Obviously given the comments which frequently appear on this blog alone, many people consider that to have been the only option available and that to consider any other option was little more than licking the boots of a tyrant and hating America.
Mark E, I'd also point out that The Weekly Standard is hardly reliable when it comes to analyzing Saddam's "links" to anything.
These were the folks who the published verbatim the "raw intel" that was "gathered" by Feith's Office of Special Plans. This intel, if you remember, had already been analyzed and sifted through by the CIA and most of the more outrageous claims were determined to be untrue. Yet Feith's group picked this garbage out of the trash can and gave it to The Weekly Standard who published it. Then Cheney goes on Meet the Press and sites that same article in The Weekly Standard as "the best source of information" for Saddam's links to Al Qaeda!! Do you realize how incredibly dishonest and misleading this was?
So excuse me if I'm more than a little bit skeptical at anything The Weekly Standard "reports", and Steve Hayes in particular has proven to be one of the worst of the bunch.
However I have read the actual report, and even if one assumes that it represents a honest assessment of Saddam's ties to terrorists (and that's a risky assumption), the picture that emerges is one of Saddam attempting to keep tabs on various groups and determine if they could be of some benefit to him in the future.
His ties to Palestinian terrorist groups were pretty extensive, but I don't think that they were much different than Saudi Arabia's or really any other Middle-Eastern country (Syria, Iran, Yemen etc.).
All other contacts seem to be of the "who are these people, and can they be of any use to us?" nature. And virtually all of the active coordination with other terrorist groups appear to be limited to targeting those countries allied against Saddam at the time of hostilities during the Gulf War, and I dare say, could be considered legitimate military actions.
The report goes on to state that Saddam's goals were secular and completely incompatible with those of Bin Laden's and other Islamic radicals. And while he was open to exploring possible collaboration in certain situations, he was under no illusions that these people could be trusted.
So, having said all that, I must ask the following....How were Saddam's links with terrorist organizations much different from our own collaboration with whoever could help us in a given situation? We've supported Islamic fighters in Afghanistan against the Soviets, Khmer Rouge against the Vietnamese, and dozens of brutal dictators all of the world when it suited our needs. When Saddam's attempts to identify potential allies among terrorist groups is viewed through this prism, it's really not all that remarkable at all.
Well, you know, "teh terrorism" is "teh boogyman".
Really, this is just a rehash of "Saddam was a bad guy, so we had to invade Iraq."
Which was bullshit the first time around.
I still don't see any reason why the US just doesn't pay a few million bucks a year to various assassins to whack "bad guys" on a regular basis. More cheaper and more efficient.
Of course, all those "bad guys" will be instantly replaced by some other "bad guys".
So we invade instead.
And guess what? We got more "bad guys" running Iraq - and some of them are the SAME "bad guys" - namely the ones we're paying $300/month to stop shooting at US troops.
It's pathetic foreign policy.
The reality is that Saddam was completely irrelevant. It didn't matter to US that he attacked Iran. It didn't matter to US that he invaded Kuwait. It wouldn't have mattered TO US if he invaded Saudi Arabia.
Overall, he just didn't matter. He only mattered because he served as a US proxy against Iran and then served as the fall guy for US hegemonic interests in the ME. Which is the real source of the problem - US foreign policy in the service of the oil companies and the military-industrial complex and the financial community and cheap crooked politicians.
Comments closed March 28, 2008.
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Heads in the Sand
Ain't that the truth! What's Bernie Lewis saying?
Posted by RICKM | March 14, 2008 4:56 PM