BonoVoxSupastar said:
Well even that's a fallacy for their is no consensus and Bin Laden isn't the leader of Islam of Jihadism.
But once again if we're at war with Al Queda as INDY put it, why the hell are we in Iraq?
Islamism is an ideology, Al Qaeda is a "group" that embraces that ideology but it is interwoven with a bunch of other organisations throughout the middle east, central and south east asia; getting rid of "Al Qaeda" or the key players connected to Bin Laden doesn't do anything about the other groups, it is a problem bigger than just Al Qaeda, Bin Laden is irrelevant because even if he is killed or captured there are still other people with the means and intent to kill civilians to achieve the same broad goals.
Now a lot of support for Islamist groups not limited to Al Qaeda occurs in politically repressive nations where there are no avenues for dissent against the governments; dissatisfied young men seem rather prone to pursuing the revolutionary Islamist agenda in these countries. The western support to the regimes is a driving force for getting a pool of recruits for Islamist groups.
Regime change in Iraq was a policy goal set by Clinton and carried out by Bush. The objective of guaranteeing disarmnent of WMD from Saddam Husseins regime was one reason for going to war but to tie it to the broader war on terror changing US policy in the region from supporting dictators to democracy; specifically consensual government where extremist elements are tempered by other avenues of non-violent political action would be it.
The fucked up thing is that Bush doesn't mean it, he is an utter bastard who takes a halfway approach of going into Iraq (and we can rightly get mad about postwar planning) doing the much more difficult thing and allowing a transition to elected government rather than stick a benign dictator in while simultaneously approving of dictatorship in Saudi Arabia, Egypt etc. and not doing anything regionally to support progressive movements against the Mullahs in Iran.
Islamist groups will not be stopped by ceeding to their every demand or by supporting whichever bastard executes supporters the fastest; when there is the political, economic and social change that in the region (which takes decades to happen) these groups die with a whimper, they loose their attractiveness, the Iraq war was sold as a part of that and it has been depressing to see how poorly this administration has done in not doing anything else.
Regardless of the reasons why there remains the important issue of what happens when the US leaves (which it will) and the conditions it does under. On this point the savagery of the insurgents cannot be glossed over, the Sunni fundamentalist factions are not going to allow the ethnic clensing of Iraqs Sunnis without a fight and will try to establish a new Afghanistan in central Iraq; unless all parties can be guaranteed a continued existence before the US leaves there will be a bloodbath, an avoidable one.