Have we created the monster we feared?

[Dreadsox]

[Q]Since America began its occupation, Iraq has become the mecca for every angry, hate-crazed Arab extremist who wants to liberate the Middle East from the "despoiling" grasp of the infidels.

"Increasing numbers of Saudi Arabian Islamists are crossing the border into Iraq, in preparation for a jihad, or holy war, against U.S. and U.K. forces, security and Islamist sources have warned," The Financial Times said yesterday, quoting a Saudi dissident who noted that Saudi authorities are concerned that "up to 3,000 Saudi men have gone `missing' in the kingdom in two months."[/Q]

[Q]"The dynamics have really changed," said an administration official on the reconstruction team. "Now we're dealing with a guerrilla war, not terrorism."

Osama bin Laden was inspired to attack us partly by his hatred of the American military presence in Saudi Arabia. Now foreign zealots from Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Syria, enraged about the American military presence in Iraq and Afghanistan, are slipping over the Iraqi border to help Saddam loyalists.

Bush officials, who before the war also overdramatized the connection between Saddam and the Ansar al-Islam militants in northern Iraq, have now become spooked about hundreds of fighters coming back from Iran to attack Americans.

The Qaeda and Ansar zealots, along with old Baath soldiers and new foreign recruits, are intent on keeping Iraq in anarchy, even as Afghanistan also slips back into chaos, with a reconstituted Taliban fighting machine killing 90 in the last month.

The democracy dominoes are not falling as easily as Paul Wolfowitz and other neocons had predicted.[/Q]


http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/20/opinion/20DOWD.html?ex=1061956800&en=3dd6c20c85a24df8&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLE

 

[TylerDurden]

Give them 'true' democracy and they'll vote in the exact kind of people the US doesn't want.
Give them anything less, especially anything that looks like a US/Western puppet, and this will continue.

 

[ALEXRUS]

Indeed we cannot rule out that now Al-Qaeda, other Islamic extremists and SH loyalists have united in the face of "the common enemy". Explosive mix...

 

[verte76]

God knows who's in there now. Extremists are coming in to fight a "holy war" against the U.S. and now obviously the U.N. as well. Thse reports of "missing" Saudis tells us something. They are terrorists in Iraq. I was afraid this was going to happen, and I have to say it's no improvement for the Iraqi people. They're the real losers. This makes me angry. Terrorists aren't known for treating people like people, and now they are even screwing their fellow Arabs and Moslems.

 

[anitram]

Indeed we cannot rule out that now Al-Qaeda, other Islamic extremists and SH loyalists have united in the face of "the common enemy". Explosive mix...

Yes, it looks like many people out there are now operating on a "an enemy of my enemy is my friend" mentality.

When the administration spoke of people in Iraq coming out into the street to kiss the feet of the liberators, I can't believe that with all the intelligence available to them, they truly thought this would happen en masse and Iraq would become a happy democracy overnight. The sad thing is that they misrepresented things in the media, unless they actually did believe in this nonsense in which case they're even stupider than I previously thought.

The people of Iraq are real losers here. And who knows what the hell is going on inside Afghanistan's borders. If the terrorists are regrouping in Iraq, well, I for one find that incredibly frightening. What was essentially one of the most western/progressive Islamic nations once upon a time is now falling prey to foreign fundamentalists who are willing to exploit the people for their own gain. No good can come of this.

 

[verte76]

Exactly, anitram. I agree with everything you said.

 

[Scarletwine]

UN Attack Underlines America's Crumbling Authority And Shows It Can Not Guarantee The Safety Of Any One

Robert Fisk
08/20/03: What UN member would ever contemplate sending peace-keeping troops to Iraq now? The men who are attacking America's occupation army are ruthless, but they are not stupid. They know that President George Bush is getting desperate, that he will do anything - that he may even go to the dreaded Security Council for help - to reduce US military losses in Iraq. But yesterday's attack on the UN headquarters in Baghdad has slammed shut the door to that escape route.

Within hours of the explosion, we were being told that this was an attack on a "soft target", a blow against the UN itself. True, it was a "soft" target, although the machine-gun nest on the roof of the UN building might have suggested that even the international body was militarising itself. True, too, it was a shattering assault on the UN as an institution. But in reality, yesterday's attack was against the United States.

For it proves that no foreign organisation - no NGO, no humanitarian organisation, no investor, no businessman - can expect to be safe under America's occupation rule. Paul Bremer, the US pro-consul, was meant to be an "anti-terrorism" expert. Yet since he arrived in Iraq, he has seen more "terrorism" than he can have dreamt of in his worst nightmares - and has been able to do nothing about it. Pipeline sabotage, electricity sabotage, water sabotage, attacks on US troops and British troops and Iraqi policemen and now the bombing of the UN. What comes next? The Americans can reconstruct the dead faces of Saddam's two sons, but they can't reconstruct Iraq.

Of course, this is not the first indication that the "internationals" are in the sights of Iraq's fast-growing resistance movement. Last month, a UN employee was shot dead south of Baghdad. Two International Red Cross workers were murdered, the second of them a Sri Lankan employee killed in his clearly marked Red Cross car on Highway 8 just north of Hilla. When he was found, his blood was still pouring from the door of his vehicle. The Red Cross chief delegate, who signed out the doomed man on his mission to the south of Baghdad, is now leaving Iraq. Already, the Red Cross itself is confined to its regional offices and cannot travel across Iraq by road.

An American contractor was killed in Tikrit a week ago. A British journalist was murdered in Baghdad last month. Who is safe now? Who will now feel safe at a Baghdad hotel when one of the most famous of them all - the old Canal Hotel, which housed the UN arms inspectors before the invasion - has been blown up? Will the next "spectacular" be against occupation troops? Against the occupation leadership? Against the so-called Iraqi "Interim Council"? Against journalists?

The reaction to yesterday's tragedy could have been written in advance. The Americans will tell us that this proves how "desperate" Saddam's "dead-enders" have become - as if the attackers are more likely to give up as they become more successful in destroying US rule in Iraq. The truth - however many of Saddam's old regime hands are involved - is that the Iraqi resistance organisation now involves hundreds, if not thousands, of Sunni Muslims, many of them with no loyalty to the old regime. Increasingly, the Shias are becoming involved in anti-American actions.

Future reaction is equally predictable. Unable to blame their daily cup of bitterness upon Saddam's former retinue, the Americans will have to conjure up foreign intervention. Saudi "terrorists", al-Qa'ida "terrorists", pro-Syrian "terrorists", pro-Iranian "terrorists" - any mysterious "terrorists" will do if their supposed existence covers up the painful reality: that our occupation has spawned a real home-grown Iraqi guerrilla army capable of humbling the greatest power on Earth.

With the Americans still trying to bring other nations on board for their Iraqi adventure - even the Indians have had the good sense to decline the invitation - yesterday's bombing was therefore aimed at the jugular of any future "peace-keeping" mission. The UN flag was supposed to guarantee security. But in the past, a UN presence was always contingent upon the acquiescence of the sovereign power. With no sovereign power in existence in Iraq, the UN's legitimacy was bound to be locked on to the occupation authority. Thus could it be seen - by America's detractors - as no more than an extension of US power. President Bush was happy to show his scorn for the UN when its inspectors failed to find any weapons of mass destruction and when its Security Council would not agree to the Anglo-American invasion. Now he cannot even protect UN lives in Iraq. Does anyone want to invest in Iraq now? Does anyone want to put their money on a future "democracy" in Iraq?

Off topic
PS - Verte, I got the Princess Trilogy - excellent thanks for recommending it.

 

[melon]

Drop a neutron bomb and kill them all.

(I say this in jest, not seriousness)

Melon

 

[Scarletwine]

Fisk's new article asks a interesting question.
Why The US Needs To Blame al-Qa'ida

By Robert Fisk
08/21/03: It was always the same story. If it wasn't the enemy you were fighting, it was the enemy you knew you'd have to fight in the future.

So when the killers of Baghdad on Tuesday slaughtered 20 UN staff, with the UN's local proconsul, Sergio Vieira de Mello, the Americans embarked on one of their familiar flights into fancy. If it wasn't Saddam's "diehard remnants" who were tormenting them, it must be al-Qa'ida's "remnants" who are destroying America's best efforts to produce democracy in Iraq (though not Afghanistan); "foreign Arab" fighters were creeping over the border from Iran or Syria.

This was the line from the "Coalition Provisional Authority" yesterday: don't, for God's sake, produce proof of home-grown opposition, or the whole "liberation" of Iraq might look rather dodgy. Blame it on al-Qa'ida, on "Ansar al-Islam", on "terrorists" coming from Saudi Arabia or Syria or Afghanistan. But, during the war against the American invasion of Iraq, weren't there two suicide bombings in Nasariyah, one by a man, the second by two women? Weren't they Iraqis? And isn't it possible an Iraqi Sunni resistance movement - for let us be frank and accept that the Shia have not yet joined the resistance war, though they will - destroyed the UN headquarters on Tuesday? Only yesterday did it emerge that the bomber was probably a suicider.

Months ago, when Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defence Secretary who in a previous incarnation pleaded with Saddam (circa 1983) to reopen the US embassy in Baghdad, arrived in the Iraqi capital to address his troops, he warned of "terrorist" organisations at large in Iraq. Some of us wondered what he was talking about. Hadn't the US just defeated Iraq?

But then we realised he was spinning a narrative for journalists to grasp if the "Saddam remnants" line wore out. There would be other evildoers to blame, other antagonists in the "war on terror" to single out.

Sure enough, the "outside" guerrillas have now been brought centre-stage, whether or not they exist, to explain why US rule in Iraq is coming undone. The US can crush Saddam. It can kill his sons. But still it cannot control Iraq.

This, in a sense, is the last heirloom that Saddam has handed to President George Bush: you can occupy this country, he is saying, but you can't rule it. Saddam created enough pseudo-Wahabist groups to let off steam during his reign. Talk about Islam, they were told, but not about politics. But the moment the regime collapsed, these organisations, which had always been hostile to Saddam, were left to their own devices, and immediately opposed US rule in Iraq. They, not al-Qa'ida, or anyone else, are running this butchery of a war against America and its friends in Iraq.

When the resistance to the Americans began in Lebanon in 1982-83, it started with stone-throwing after six months. Yet the assaults on the Americans in Baghdad are coming at a speed six times as fast. Six months ago, it would have been impossible to imagine such a scenario. Certainly, al-Qa'ida could not have organised its legions so quickly. So even Osama bin Laden may have something to learn from this debacle.

 

[verte76]

Yes. There was a report on my (old) ISP about a group taking responsibility for this act. It's some pseudo-Wahhabist sect. They'll define a jihad on their own, thank you very much.