A metafilter thread disussing an “analysis” that (big shock) thinks the war in Iraq is bad. My response is below.

posted by soulhuntre at 12:34 PM EST on September 11

( re-formatted and spell checked, the original is much uglier )

This analysis, though biased and pretty much built to support a political conclusion does raise some interesting points.

If you accept the premises you see that there is a drive to unit the Middle East into a “superstate” – one that would be openly hostile to the existence  of the US and one that would be led by the same people who run the and/or support the terrorist networks. Palestine is their excuse, but it certainly isn’t their only driving force clearly.

“The attack on the World Trade Center was exactly analogous to Pearl Harbor. […] Likewise, al-Qaeda was attempting to push the United States out of the Middle East so that Egypt, Jordan, Israel and Saudi Arabia would become more vulnerable to overthrow, lacking a superpower patron.” – quote in context

That is not going to happen. The primary goal then of using terror to intimidate us into turning tail and leaving the Middle East under the control of those who actively seek to do us harm isn’t working out for them. Instead we have smashed one of the most vocal and powerful opponents in the area and now have a strong strategic and ongoing presence to use for any future responses we need.

As Japan found out, it doesn’t always make sense to kick the US thinking you will scare us into hiding.

“Bin Laden hoped the US would timidly withdraw from the Middle East. But he appears to have been aware that an aggressive US response to 9/11 was entirely possible. In that case, he had a Plan B: al-Qaeda hoped to draw the US into a debilitating guerrilla war in Afghanistan and do to the US military what they had earlier done to the Soviets. Al-Zawahiri’s recent message shows that he still has faith in that strategy.” – quote in context

I am sure he does… but it isn’t going to fly. The war in Iraq is far from “debilitating” and as more and more vicious terrorist attacks happen it is becoming more common for Muslims to question the motives and morality of their terrorist brethren. Of course a US withdrawal at this point would be disastrous, as would going to the UN “hat in hand”.

The strategy the author clearly favors (air strikes and only a small ground force) would not have solved the problem.. and it would have allowed for a vocal and vicious opponent to look up from the smoke and declare his defiance (Saddam). It is not nearly as much of an issue to have Bin Laden elude us. He has nothing… no country, no army, no wealth to protect and no state to rule. He can survive our wrath only by running, digging and hiding like a hunted animal. This is hardly as much of a PR problem as Saddam living in luxury, torturing his citizens and appearing on the news every day declaring that we have failed to defeat him. Much like he did after the first Iraq war was stopped short.

So the news flash is – no matter what we did the terrorist spin doctors (they have them, and PR guys too I am sure) coudl make it seem like they are winning and apologists for them will find a way to wring their hands and proclaim we brought it all on ourselves. No news at all.