With all the attention on the Iraqi front in the war against radical Islam, it is all too easy to lose sight of exactly who we are fighting, or more properly, who is currently waging war against us. This suits the needs of the anti-war cohort who have their own complicated motives for seeking to undermine our efforts in Iraq, ranging from those on the far left who actively seek an American defeat (to discredit American "imperialism") to those who cynically see an American failure as being their path to power in the 2008 elections, to those who honestly understand the war in Iraq as an error and an impossibility. By depicting Iraq as a separate and unique war dissociated form the greater war of radical Islam against the West, abandoning the front in Iraq is held to be inconsequential to the overall war (which, in any event, is also denied by those who oppose our efforts.)
Robert Tracinski addresses some of these questions in his article today at Real Clear Politics, The Intellectual Stakes of the Iraq War:
... it is important at this moment to understand exactly what is at stake, and why it is vital to persist and win in Iraq--no matter what else the United States does.
Most commentators on the right have argued, correctly, that an American retreat in Iraq would embolden our enemies by validating their conviction that America is psychologically weak and can be driven from any conflict by a few months' or years' worth of mayhem and car bombings. I will expand on that argument in part two of this article. But what I think is less well recognized is the intellectual effect of a repudiation of the Iraq War. A withdrawal from Iraq would constitute a national disavowal of the principles used to justify the war--yet these include vital principles that are indispensable for the wider battle against radical Islam.
The crucial context for the war in Iraq is that it is part of a wider conflict against radical Islam, and any recommendation for what should be done in Iraq should be judged by the standard: will it make that wider war harder or easier to fight?
Tracinski does an excellent job of explaining some of the stakes involved and explicating the rationale for our involvement in Iraq and its part in the greater war, but his conclusion is incomplete and problematic:
In the wider war, it is now clear that our central enemy is Iran. The Islamic Republic of Iran has been arming and training Sunni and Shiite insurgents in Iraq and is now arming and training the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan; it is also the power behind an Islamist Axis that includes the Assad regime in Syria, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Hamas in the Palestinian territories; and Iran has allied itself with our other enemies across the globe, as far away as Venezuela.
But if we are to wage war against Iran, on what grounds shall we do it? What principles of war would we have to invoke?
There is no question that Iran is at war with us; they have been since the Ayatollah Khomeini declared war by invading sovereign American territory in 1979 in a clear act of war. The Iranians have attacked us many times since, continue to harbor al Qaeda, and support terrorist groups which explicitly threaten us and our allies. Yet, his article is only half right. By focusing on Iranian radicalism, essentially Shia extremism, he neglects the point that in the long run our more dangerous foes may well be the Sunni radicals who have also declared war on us.
Sunni extremism, from its base in Saudi Arabia, has been waging war against the West in various forums since well before 9/11. Their approach has always been two-fold. They have funded and supplied the manpower for those who would overtly confront us in the terror wars they wage against us and they attack us even more skillfully using information warfare, fueled by the immense amounts of money they gain from the world's dependence on their oil.
The New York Times story about the Saudi's efforts to defeat us in Iraq, U.S. Officials Voice Frustrations With Saudis’ Role in Iraq, reveals how difficult it continues to be for American government officials to acknowledge that the Saudis act as if they are our enemies:
Now, Bush administration officials are voicing increasing anger at what they say has been Saudi Arabia’s counterproductive role in the Iraq war. They say that beyond regarding Mr. Maliki as an Iranian agent, the Saudis have offered financial support to Sunni groups in Iraq. Of an estimated 60 to 80 foreign fighters who enter Iraq each month, American military and intelligence officials say that nearly half are coming from Saudi Arabia and that the Saudis have not done enough to stem the flow.
One senior administration official says he has seen evidence that Saudi Arabia is providing financial support to opponents of Mr. Maliki. He declined to say whether that support was going to Sunni insurgents because, he said, “That would get into disagreements over who is an insurgent and who is not.”
...
Officials in Washington have long resisted blaming Saudi Arabia for the chaos and sectarian strife in Iraq, choosing instead to pin blame on Iran and Syria. Even now, military officials rarely talk publicly about the role of Saudi fighters among the insurgents in Iraq.
The accounts of American concerns came from interviews with several senior administration officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they believed that openly criticizing Saudi Arabia would further alienate the Saudi royal family at a time when the United States is still trying to enlist Saudi support for Mr. Maliki and the Iraqi government, and for other American foreign policy goals in the Middle East, including an Arab-Israeli peace plan.
The Saudis have been "riding the tiger" for a very long time. The royal family sees their survival as depending on the United States (to protect them from external dangers) and on externalization (to protect them against internal dangers.) The two modes of protection are fundamentally in opposition. In order to placate their internal opponents, they support the most intolerant brand of supremacist Islam and their accommodation requires that the Wahhabi/Sunni extremists direct their venom toward the West. This is an unstable construct but has worked and continues to work because the West needs their oil, many American politicians depend on Saudi money for their pet projects and post-government livelihoods, and the Saudi royal family hold themselves out as a bulwark against chaos in the Middle East even as they foment chaos throughout the region.
Stanley Kurtz in NRO describes a significant ideological front in the war and his article is sobering:
Unless we counteract the influence of Saudi money on the education of the young, we’re going to find it very difficult to win the war on terror. I only wish I was referring to Saudi-funded madrassas in Pakistan. Unfortunately, I’m talking about K-12 education in the United States. Believe it or not, the Saudis have figured out how to make an end-run around America’s K-12 curriculum safeguards, thereby gaining control over much of what children in the United States learn about the Middle East. While we’ve had only limited success paring back education for Islamist fundamentalism abroad, the Saudis have taken a surprising degree of control over America’s Middle-East studies curriculum at home.
The entire article is well worth your time; however, for the short hand version, take a look at the this. [HT: John Hinderaker at Powerline]
Jihad takes many forms and there is actually relatively little conflict among Muslims about the goals of Jihad, ie to establish the world wide dominance of Islam.
Much has been made recently of the Pew survey showing the drop off in support for suicide bombing among the world's Muslim population, with the conspicuous exception of the Palestinian death cultists. Unfortunately there is nothing in the Pew survey that suggests Muslims at large are coming to see suicide bombing as morally repugnant; rather, I suspect that much of the drop in support has to do with their recognition that it is bringing disfavor upon Islam in general, and that the main victims have been Muslims. I suspect that a large majority of those who have lost faith in suicide bombing have not questioned the Islamic supremacy that has always fueled Jihad. It would be interesting if Pew were to ask questions directed at those attitudes because it is just those attitudes that support and maintain the long war against us.
It would be helpful if the world community were to more explicitly demand civilized behavior from the Muslim world but that is an expectation sure to lead to disappointment.
We face long odds against achieving a visible victory in Iraq. It is sadly predictable that even if we achieve a very good outcome, with grounds for optimism, when General Petraeus reports to Congress in September, the MSM and the anti-war cohort, with the assistance of al Qaeda and the Shia radicals who will certainly time their "Tet offensive" to most effectively influence the debate, will do their best to depict our efforts as a failure. If we lose the war in Congress, the next stages of the war will be significantly more difficult. In the end I still believe we will win the long war because our enemies have so little to offer and have a long history of over-reach when they feel they are on the ascendant.
If past performance is predictive, no amount of propaganda proclaiming that Islam is the "religion of peace" will suffice to out-weigh the image of Islam as a bloodthirsty and intolerant dogma, once the radicals have taken their next steps in the war they have been waging for the last 30 years.
Update: There is more on the Saudi threat from Douglass Farah, The Growing Saudi Conundrum, at the Counterterrorism Blog.
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